


WIPs

by purplekitte



Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors, Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dream Sex, First Time, Imperial Guard, Judaism, Multi, PWP, Psychic Abilities, Sex Pollen, Sisters of Battle, Some 40k era though mostly 30k, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-11
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-09-14 09:53:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 37,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16910730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplekitte/pseuds/purplekitte
Summary: A collection of WIPs I've posted over the years but never finished that don't fit anywhere else





	1. Dot and Zoe, book 1 excerpt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Original characters, mostly gen, OFC/OFC [PG-13]

I am a captain in the Guard not because of any military training or ability, but because I once punched a Space Marine in the face.

There I was. Back before Epistophy was an Imperial-compliant world, a civilized world there was some talk of making into an agriworld for a while, back when the Warp-storms that had raged around the system for uncounted millennia had just subsided, it was summer and I was working three part-time jobs because the one I really cared about, my research internship at the university lab, didn’t pay. I had much less time during the school year, so I had to earn as much money as I could during the summer. It was boring work and I hardly spoke to any of the colleagues beyond vague chit-chat because we had so little in common and my car’s air conditioning hadn’t worked in years which was just great with all the time I spent driving around and it was in the forties out.

I kept my professional smile on, even though I was thinking about how I wanted to never come back, possibly never get out of bed again. Why couldn’t I unwind for a while? Theoretically I would have a week vacation next month, but visiting family was even more tiring than my normal routine. Then it would be fall and there would be another generation of rats to deal with and my dissertation to write and...

Smile. There was a trick to it. Not a grin--that was too much like something specific and good had happened and I knew it and no one else did. A slight quirk at the curve of my lips into a pleasant but unfocused expression. I didn’t need to look smart, just be present. The ushers’ uniforms at the opera house were distinctive enough--red shirt with black waistcoat and trousers. I could keep my face that way for hours without my cheeks hurting and with hardly any conscious thought.

Look left. Look right. If most people were in their seats, I could sneak away from giving directions to row J and go take a cigarette break. The fact I did not smoke and never had was irrelevant to the urge.

I opened the back door and slipped out. Directing people from the parking garage to the opera house proper was not a desirable job, being un-air conditioned, but I could trade indistinct chatter for the traffic sounds and the usual taxis idling outside the door.

There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Not surprising since it was the dry season and a drought year at that. Not that that meant much to me, since people had been saying it was a drought year my whole life, except that one time we had the big flash floods ten years back. It was still solidly afternoon rather than evening, this being the matinee, but with how clear it was I would be able to see a few of the brightest planets or stars if I looked at exactly the right spot. I considered going for the opera glasses I had in a pocket, but I’d have to be very careful not to look directly at the sun through them.

Instead, I saw a shooting star. Maybe an aeroplane going to one of the smaller landing strips in the area? I vaguely recalled something on the news the night before about a meteor shower, but it wasn’t one of the regularly scheduled ones. While I might usually have been interested in the story, I’d drunk a litre of water and fallen asleep in a sweaty sprawl my couch about then.

Since I half-thought it was an aeroplane, I didn’t give much thought to the fact it was getting closer and started to stroll over to ask the actual parking lot attendant ‘if he needed any help’ to have an excuse for what I’d been doing.

As a result, I heard rather than saw the impact. The pavement under my feet, already half-melted from the sun, rippled in a miniature earthquake. A wave of superheated air rushed over me and outward.

I spun around. An ugly office building a block down was smoking. It was then the screaming started.

Strictly speaking, my job in the case of emergency was to direct the quick, safe, and orderly evacuation of the thousand people in the opera hall. To do otherwise would be wrong and a dereliction of duty. I would probably get fired if my boss ever saw me again, but I hated that jobs and had been thinking of quitting anyway, so I didn’t care. So I high-tailed it out of there to see the spectacle.

Had an aeroplane crashed? At least no one would be in their office on Sunday afternoon, I figured.

Fighting my way through the few other pedestrians in the street, now fleeing, I saw the drop pod for the first time and realised beyond all reasonable doubt this was no aeroplane or freak meteor strike.

Aliens! From outer space!

Of course, they might be hostile space aliens planning to kill/eat/assimilate all humans, so it was probably best to not be in the welcoming committee and find out whether or not they came in peace from the evening news from a prudent distance away. But if the random destruction was going to begin, I was already in the wrong city, so it would hardly matter if I died immediately or slightly later. I wanted to see the aliens! I’m sure that would have been so comforting to my family at my funeral. If only I had a boom box with some yodelling folk music.

I kept running towards them. I could see the figures that had emerged from their space ship by then. Giant black robots maybe two meters tall and almost as wide at the shoulders as they were tall, but basically humanoid. Their forms reminded me of giant suits of armour, particular with the wide pauldrons, and the presence of long-barrelled guns and huge swords and axes confirmed that they were probably killer-robots. They were bedecked in what, I saw as I got even closer, were ragged black and grey fur cloaks and necklaces and amulets of huge teeth.

‘Wow!’ I heard myself say, coming to a stop. If I died in the next two seconds, my life would have been worth it.

One of them turned its face plate towards me. It was strangely silent besides the ringing in my ears. Those who had been on the street had run and those who had been in buildings hadn’t come out yet.

 ** _+YOU,+_** I heard. The word boomed in my head and I clutched my hands over my ears, for all I hadn’t actually _heard_ anything. It wasn’t even a word, I instinctively knew, an idea being forced into my head so hard that by brain built words around it to process it.

‘If you want me to take you to my leader, I’m afraid that’s nowhere near here.’ The situation was so unbelievable at this point that I was too far in shock to actually feel fear.

+Who do you speak for?+

‘Uh, no one. I don’t speak for my planet or anything. You’re a psychic spaceman talking in my head, did you know that?’ I was, on the other hand, rather hysterical by that point.

+All this panic. Are your people so fearful?+

‘I’m here, aren’t I?’

+Show me what a warrior of your people is capable of, then.+

‘Okay, but just so you know, I’m not a warrior of my people. I’m an adolescent civilian with no military training.’ Perhaps I was exaggerating the ‘adolescent’ part by a few years, but my teenaged rec centre karate and judo classes certainly didn’t count against a robot that loomed over me and outweighed me by a tonne. Still, my blood was singing with excitement. The space alien was talking to me (telepathically!) and had challenged me to a duel, even if only as some sort of test, tease, or formality.

The robot had put away its weapons and made no further move towards them, indicating I was both being patronised and supposed to hit it. So I did.

Nothing so large should be able to move so fast, though I recalled from my instructing younger children in karate that it was really easy to step out of the way of someone taking wild swings at you when that was all you were doing and it _looked_ much more impressive than it was.

What to do? Even though it was heavy enough to crack the pavement under it and looked badly balanced, it was at least as fast as I was.

I knew the area. What could I use? I wondered as I took another swing in combination with a kick. It moved its feet quickly, but they stayed very close to the ground. It probably wasn’t made to kick, not on ground that wasn’t secure for it, but it could certain stomp me if I tried to get under it. This street was old and made for pedestrians, not rated for high weights, I knew from all the signs redirecting cars around. If I could just get it off balance.

In the street there was a manhole cover that was a little too small and had fallen through on a particularly hot day a few weeks ago and the city kept meaning to shut down the street to fix it permanently. With how hot the very air was this close to the spaceship, it would have left a hole in the street again.

It didn’t always dodge the same way, but it wasn’t making any particular effort to avoid being herded when I kept attacking from the same side.

I threw myself at the ground into a roll between its legs. It would be able to get me with its feet easily, but it would probably have trouble doing that without seriously injuring or killing me and it had avoided that in favour of playing with me so far.

The impact with the hard ground hurt from my shoulder diagonally across my back and it _burned_ , even through two layers of clothes. The important thing was that my momentum took me straight across the open sewer maintenance hole without falling in. I was already spinning and jumping to my feet.

The alien was in no real danger of falling in, but it had to actively avoid doing so in how it placed its feet. Putting it just where I’d predicted it was going to be.

My punch connected solidly and I screamed. Pain blossomed from my hand and the very thought of shaking it out to make the pain disperse made me loose another half-scream half-groan. I cradled my hand, tried not to scream continuously, and figured I had at least cracked if not broken two or three fingers.

Fight over. I stood still, panted heavily, and looked expectantly at what the psychic robot was going to do next.

+We have need of a local guide.+

‘Okay. I’ll do it. Do you really want to meet my leader then?’ The alien was speaking directly into my head, but how could it understand me anyway? Did it actually speak my language or was it just reading my mind?

+We are tracking a traitorous drop pod that landed a few hours ago. We must follow them, determine their objective, and deny them it. The auspex places their landing site that way.+

‘Errr, how far?’

+More than one hundred kilometres. Likely quite a bit more. It is out of range of exact measurement. I shall track them with my runes to determine the exact direction once we are underway.+

‘Can’t you just use your spaceship? Did you crash?’

+No more resources will be allocated to following a single vehicle with the fleet battle still raging in the system. We were knocked off-course entering the atmosphere.+

It was too much, being drilled into my head. Too many concepts I didn’t quite get, too much too specific information, being rendered haphazardously in my mind. Pictures of spaceships. Pictures of falling. Being thrown around by atmospheric disturbances. I doubled over and shut my eyes briefly. Concentrate on the content.

There was a space battle raging right now? Did the government know and were just covering it up or were astronomers still baffled about what was happening or were our telescopes not even good enough to see it? Space! So many of my more fantastical hopes and dreams were tied up in it.

Regardless. ‘We’ll need transportation.’ I looked at the huge figures and counted to twelve. My tiny car might have fit one of them, two if they tore up all the seats. ‘Okay, there aren’t any vehicles here capable of carrying all of you, but I can acquire one not too far away. Would it be possible for you to wait and hide here for me to return with it?’

+I do not smell the taint of Chaos on you. I have accepted you as our guide. So guide.+

‘Right.’ I rubbed my head with my good hand. All other pain paled compared to that coming from my left hand, but I was pretty sure I had an awful headache. I also discovered I had a nosebleed. I didn’t recall hitting anything with my face, so I was going to blame the psychic communication. I probably had brain cancer already. ‘Follow me.’

The robot I had been talking to and fighting barked an order to the others in a language I didn’t understand, confirming my suspicion that they didn’t actually understand a word I was saying and were using mindreading.

I led them away down the least-used streets I knew. I could already hear sirens from all directions and thought I saw a helicopter in a gap between buildings. Hopefully no one had seen us yet, but I needed to get them out of sight as quickly as possible. They had big guns after all and I didn’t want to see them have a shootout with the police.

Downtown was densely packed with buildings. Which one? Another corporate office building would be most likely to be empty. I avoided the glass front door and brought us around to a graffitied door around the side of one. ‘Can you break this down?’

One of them hit the door, and even I could tell it was hitting it lightly, and the steel dented inwards, the lock breaking off from the wall. ‘Thank you.’ They had to fit through the doorway sideways.

That led us to the landing of a stairwell. I chose down. As expected, the lowest level contained only storage and the offices for maintenance and cleaning crews. Even the ceilings in the hallways were naked bundles of wire.

Finding what I hoped was the most out of the way place behind a bunch of old computer monitors and cardboard boxes, I directed, ‘Stay here until I get back.’

+Hurry back, guide.+

‘Twenty minutes.’ I tensed to start running back to the stairs, but I paused for a moment for something that suddenly felt important. I tapped my chest and said clearly, ‘Dot.’

The space robots had names, right? Designations? They were all painted and attired differently enough that I had to think of them as individuals.

‘Valtyr.’

I grinned. Some things were too universal to need mind-reading. Then I ran for my car.

* * *

I had one vital detour to make on the way, so I pulled into a local pharmacy with my jerky one-handed driving. I opened and downed a handful of pills dry from a bottle of the strongest over-the-counter painkiller I knew of. That was the full daily-recommended-dose right there, but I intended to keep taking them all day anytime I felt the need. Then I picked up a box of finger splints and went over the pharmacists’ counter to make my purchases.

Of all the pharmacies on my way, this was the one where my next door neighbour worked. We weren’t that close, but she was a medical student and pharmacy assistant and knew me.

‘Ndelitunga, it’s good to see you. Hey, could you help me with something? I think I sprained my fingers in a particularly vicious tennis match and I’m not quite sure I can get these splints on myself. Would it leave you open to horrible liability charges if you helped me?’ I said as cheerfully as I could.

She examined my hand and her black brows knit. ‘They might be broken. You should go to the emergency room.’

‘I guess I will later. It doesn’t hurt that much. Could you help me for now, though?’

‘Sure, Dot. I’ll come over tonight to check on you, alright?’

‘Sure, unless the hospital says there’s really something wrong with me and wants to keep me longer.’ I’d wiped off the nosebleed as well as I could, but couldn’t do anything about my rather dirty clothes. My hair was coming out of its ponytail too and I didn’t have the dexterity to fix it one-handed. It was really extreme tennis apparently.

I gritted my teeth as hard as I could to not scream as she set and splinted my fingers. Two of them were obviously broken. They would heal pretty well, eventually, but I never had the same dexterity from them.

On my way out, I also went to the ATM and took out a hefty amount of cash, just in case I needed to go on the run and become as untraceable as possible in the near future. My long term finances no longer mattered to me. Space aliens! If I needed money I’d go on a circuit of all the talk shows, all of them, and then write a tell-all book.

I continued down the street. I’d only been where I was going once, when I first moved to Clear Fork for graduate school, and was counting on my extremely good memory for directions to remember where it was.

Was that the petrol station I was looking for? I made a sharp turn into the shopping centre, running over some of the curb, but fortunately not into any other cars.

I jogged inside the rental car office and announced. ‘I need to rent a moving van.’

‘Did you make a reservation online?’

‘No. If you have any in your lot, I’d like it now. If not, I can come back later.’ Well, no, I’d have to think of something else, but it didn’t pay to sound too desperate. I smiled a good ‘I am happy but absent-minded and out-of-touch’ smile. I was obviously a crazy person, if as long as no one looked too closely at my injuries they could pretend I was a harmless one.

‘We have five and eight meter trucks in, but you won’t get the discount for making a reservation online.’

‘That’s fine. The eight meter one. I have to move a whole flat.’

‘Where and when will you be returning it?’

‘Here. In four days.’ Heck if I knew.

‘It will be 19.95 per day plus 0.39 per mile.’

‘Money is no object.’

I tuned out the rest of the explanation of about how liable I was for any damages and how I should return it with a full petrol tank. I was glad to be just old enough that I didn’t get extra fees for my age when trying to rent something.

I abandoned my car in the parking lot. It would probably get towed before I came back for it. It had awful gas mileage and even worse air conditioning anyway.

* * *

There were barricades downtown, but I’d left the robots outside the police perimeter, so I could park nearby and was confident they hadn’t been found yet. Spectators were starting to crowd in earnest closer to the scene but no one was interested in the building I was.

I peeled the deformed door open again and ran downstairs as quickly as I could. Every step jarred my injuries, but thankfully I had epinephrine and delicious pills.

 _WTF?_ I stopped short in the doorway. They had removed what turned out to helmets, revealing fleshy human heads with long, braided hair and beards.

Not robots from space. Spacemen.

I stood staring for I don’t know how long before I was brought back to reality by a single word. ‘Dot.’ The voice was low and gruff and quite different than it had been over a speaker. Odd, I hadn’t heard anything coming down the hall, so they must either not have been talking among themselves or been doing it psychically.

‘Valtyr.’

I assumed I was right about which one was him at least. He was the biggest, with the most elaborate, engraved armour, I guess it was armour since they were men rather than robots. He was significantly older than the others, grey haired, while they hardly looked my age. Other than being two meters tall and two meters wide.

I made a ‘follow’ gesture and Valtyr repeated it to the others. He didn’t say anything into my mind, for which I was grateful because my nosebleed had started up again just looking at him.

One of them tapped on the side of my moving truck and looked disappointed when it dented. ‘Of course it’s not armoured,’ I snapped, not that they could understand me, and held my hands wide to say ‘at least it’s big enough’.

Regardless, they filed in quickly and with military efficiency. To my surprise, Valtyr went in the back and one of the others crammed himself into the passenger cab. Well, I hadn’t been expecting to get my deposit back and I certainly wasn’t going to with the look of what remained of that seat. And this was the smallest of them.

I pulled myself up into the driver’s seat. ‘Dot,’ I said.

‘Isolfr.’ Giant scale aside, if anything he was rather pretty and delicate compared to the rest of them. His flaxen beard was just long enough to be braided, but he was still clearly a _young_ man and I was curious if his hair was as soft as it looked. Since randomly petting someone like a dog was a faux pas in most cultures I knew of, I resisted the urge.

He pointed north. I suppose he either had the directions or they had a way of communicating with each other. They were spacepeople with guns, so I shouldn’t be surprised they had radios.

I started the truck and immediately garnered a weird look when I started driving south. ‘I’m getting us to the highway, a big, straight, smooth road where we can go much faster.’

He gave me a blank look. I gave him a blank look and tried picturing the highway really clearly in my mind. Finally he pointed to his forehead, then shook his head.

So they weren’t all psychic, assuming that gesture meant the same thing I thought it did. Maybe only Valtyr was and that was why he’d been the only one talking to me. He must have really not thought it important to relay to me complicated instructions at this point, since he’d sent someone else who I couldn’t talk to.

I slowed down and pulled to the side a bit to give a pantomime explanation. I pointed at a building and moved my hand down and sideways to illustrate having to manoeuvre between them, then moved my hand up rapidly, which would hopefully get across ‘until we reach the highway, then we can speed up and take a junction north’. I realized this was going to happen a lot and was going to be really embarrassing.

On the upside, embarrassment necessitated caring and I was talking to spacemen and that was taking up much of my emotional attention. I didn’t even try to explain ‘lots of one-way streets’.

It was difficult to make turns with a much larger vehicle than I was used to and only one good hand, but I avoided hitting anything hard enough to feel or hear the impact. Once I was on the highway, everything would be better. There were definite advantages to living in a city smack-dab in the middle of nowhere once you got beyond the metropolitan area. If we were going north, we could go north for literally days without hitting anything but flat prairies of grazing land and corn fields and eventually the arctic circle in five thousand kilometres or so.

Once we reached a solid hundred ten kph, Isolfr looked much more relaxed. I smiled and nodded broadly and encouragingly, and got a slight nod of approval in return. We were on the right track. Normally I’d have been going a good ten kilometres faster, but of all times in my life, I really didn’t want to get pulled over just then.

I still had no idea how far we were going to go, but when told to stop or turn I would get off at the first exit. Hopefully wherever their enemies were was along a major road, because I would not look forward to trying to make any speed on small country roads or cross-country over bad terrain and barbed-wire fences. Their enemies would have the same problem, I could hope.

Driving is not inherently interesting, particularly on a straight, uncrowded road with scenery I was familiar with. Green grass gone yellow from lack of water, occasional clumps of trees or black cows in the distance, slight rolling hills by local standard that would be described as ‘table-top flat’ by anyone else. I thought about turning on the radio, but flipping through stations with my bad hand in a vehicle with unfamiliar settings did not sound like a good idea.

I eyed Isolfr as much as I could without looking away from the road too much. Were all spacepeople so huge or only these ones? Speculation on high-gravity planets was that they would make someone stronger, but shorter. Maybe there’d been a mutation in the population for overactive growth hormone or testosterone production during puberty and it had been advantageous enough to spread. How much genetic diversity did their population have, or more generally, how many of them were there? All twelve of them looked ethnically similar in facial structure, but they could easily be in the same military unit _because_ they were from the same locality, as far as I knew about military affairs. They had the minimum capacity to have space battles, but as for upper limits all I knew was there’d never been here before. Did they have faster-than-light travel? Faster-than-light communication? They had psychics, so probably the latter at least.

No, too little information for useful speculation. Maybe later I could act out some more complicated questions or ask mind-reading Valtyr.

Three hours later, I was almost as bored as I was excited and I was putting updated touches on my childhood dream of how I was going to terraform my own planet. More than a hundred kilometres, they said. We’d gone more than three hundred. Their enemies had better be a moving target or I’d be very unimpressed with their ability to navigate.

Despite how still he’d sat except for eye movements for hours, Isolfr gave me an interrogative cough when I pulled into a truck stop. I made a vroom sound and mimed a vehicle moving, then the sound and the movement petering out. ‘Needs more petrol.’ I had half a tank still, but out here petrol stations were few and far between, so better to fill up when you could then get stranded somewhere.

Setting up the pump, I mimed to him eating and drinking, then pointed at the convenience store, then made a sweeping motion back towards him and the back of the truck. ‘Should I bring you anything? You probably shouldn’t stretch your legs or people might see you.’

Isolfr said something in his language and shook his head. Apparently they didn’t want food. Or we were completely misinterpreting each other. You never knew.

Leaving them in the truck, I went into the convenience store to use the w.c. and buy any maps they had and something to eat. I stocked up on jerked beef, dried fruit, trail mix, bottled water, canned coffee, and over-the-counter pain pills in case I couldn’t get anything else for awhile. Hopefully the cashier wouldn’t look out the window.

From the news playing, the government was saying it had been some sort of military satellite crashing and subsequent newest generation planes had been sent to secure the area and clean up, and all the crazies were saying it was aliens but no one was believing them just on principle.

I suppose my plans to be a celebrity might be derailed if this whole incident was never made public, but maybe I could get a government job with high security clearance, since I already knew about aliens. I imagined myself in a black suit. It didn’t really work, but maybe they’d let me grow alien fungus scraped off the wreckage or something.

I also took the time to do what I’d been itching to for two and a half hours: call my girlfriend. Having only one hand was getting annoying. It had meant I couldn’t fish my mobile out of my pocket and hold it up to my ear while driving.

‘Zoe! Did you hear about the explosion in downtown Clear Fork?’ I lived in Clear Fork at the moment and she was an hour’s drive east in northern Bryan, living with her parents over the summer, near where my parents lived too. We’d been flatmates as undergrads, but our graduate work had taken us half the country apart most of the year. If she’d been anywhere near on the way, I’d have picked her up.

‘No, but I gather you’re fine. Good.’ She read internet news feeds more consistently than I did, but she could easily have spent the last four hours asleep or watching DVDs. Having just gotten her master’s degree in philosophy after reading religious studies and psychology concurrently as an undergraduate, she had returned to her natural nocturnal state this summer and was not to be woken before two in the afternoon.

‘Stuff has happened. I can’t possible explain it without taking more time than I have and sounding crazy, though I know you’d believe me. The important thing is, I’m near Deer Creek and may want you to meet me in Kichai soon.’

‘Okay. Right now?’

I was so grateful to be dating someone who would go to her car and drive five hundred kilometres at the drop of a hat just because I asked her to. Of course, I would do the same for her any day.

‘Yeah. Please. By all means finish your coffee first. I’ll call you again if I end up changing directions before you get there.’

‘Alright.’

‘I’ll explain everything later. I could give you a two second breakdown now, but it would drive you to distraction until you could see it for yourself, it’s driving me crazy now with unanswered questions, and I just can’t do it over the phone.’

‘Dot, you’re babbling. If you’re not going to tell me now, don’t go on about it. I believe you. Call me back. If I get closer and you haven’t, I’ll track the GPS in your phone.’

She knew my password for online linkup, right. ‘Yes, do that. But I’ll call again as soon as I can. Gotta go, love you, bye.’

I jogged back out to the truck, worried that I’d taken too long and the spacemen were getting impatient. Maybe they were. My guesses based on body language only went so far. Isolfr pointed north again, a little east, but were following the highway as far as I was concerned. If we got way off, we would go to a different highway.


	2. Dot and Zoe time travel, book 1 snippet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is Horus. He's about to turn to Chaos and plunge humanity into ten thousand years of civil war. This could have been prevented if he had a sassy gay friend.
> 
> (I find the fact I write this silly Heresy-AU fix-it-fic even more embarrassing than the previous fic that it's a spin-off of.)
> 
> (OFC/OFC, Kyril Sindermann, Horus [PG-13])

It took me a minute to realize I didn’t understand what the people around me were saying. I will blame that on the fact everything in my mind had to get around the lingering image of my blood on the controls of the Thunderhawk I was piloting.

Remembering how that had happened was easy, even with however many drugs I was on to make everything stop hurting. The Warp storm cutting into reality, my power sword cutting through Chaos spawn, the howls of larger daemons elsewhere on the strike cruiser.

Beads of sweat dripping into my eyes and stung, and as I shook my head to flick them away, a monster with teeth too large to fit in its mouth leaping for me.

I crouched and swung my sword over my head. That killed whatever it was, but I was blinded by the rain of blood and intestines and staying in place that long let something vaguely canine but long and flat and sinuous sink its teeth into my ankle.

I screamed in pain and twisted around to stomp on it with my other boot. Skull crunched satisfyingly under my foot, though I couldn’t hear the audio over all the sirens and claxons going off.

The dockmaster was yelling for everyone to get to the saviour pods, the ship was lost and the self-destruct countdown had been activated. Get anything that could fly to the Marines on the ground.

I ran/limped for the farthest Thunderhawk to get it prepped for launch, so missed whatever happened after that as the ship shook disconcertingly. A Thunderhawk normally has a crew of four, so there were quite a lot of buttons and levers for me to push on my own. I didn’t even stop to light incense, preferring to ‘bully the machine-spirit into submission’ until someone looked about me askew for it. No one else crawled in after me, so it took me quite a while to notice the dock was otherwise cleared out.

Of course, everyone would have made for the closest saviour pod or drop pod, not the rear starboard dock with a bunch of blast doors down between there and here. At least that had kept me from being swarmed by daemons while not paying attention.

The Thunderhawk lifted off from the middle of the deck shakily. I pride myself on being able to operate every major vehicle in Imperial service, but I’m a much better driver than pilot, particularly on Space Marine-sized controls.

So it might have been my bad piloting or the explosion behind me or the Warp storm all around that made me hit the edge of the hanger bay on my way out, then go spinning off into space at a random angle. I pushed the throttle as far as I could in the hope of getting out of the blast radius.

And that was about all I remembered, beyond the impact of my face against the controls. Reaching up to check the bandages on my face, I decided I had a broken nose and a concussion, but seemed to be otherwise fine. I’d been able to walk on my ankle earlier, so that was just lacerations, not even a broken bone.

Zoe? Had she made it off-ship? No, wait, she hadn’t even been in the system. Off on another jaunt in Tau space.

The medicae was still talking to me, a man in the uniform of a Guard regiment I didn’t recognise. It sounded almost familiar. High Gothic. Why?

I must have been babbling in my sleep in my native Epistophian language or Fenrisian and not responding to their Low Gothic and confused the heck out of them, so they switched to the universal, shared language of humanity, for all that only scholars and priests knew it well.

‘Sorry. I speak standard Gothic,’ I said.

This... did not help. He continued to speak to me in fluent High Gothic, which I had to admit was a bit impressive in a common medicae.

Did _they_ not speak Imperial Gothic as I knew it? I didn’t recognize the regimental insignia. Were they from somewhere distant in the galaxy, or feral worlders beset by some of the linguistic difficulties that the Epistophy First had experienced in our early days of Imperial service?

Time to try my hand at my limited High Gothic and hope they found a translator soon. I had an okay vocabulary from my medical and ecclesiastical High Gothic, but knew nothing about speaking it conversationally or verb tenses and such.

‘Nomen est Dorothy Katai. Nigrum Lupi Astartes, militus... no, servus.’

‘Legiones serva?’

‘Yes?’ I wasn’t sure if he meant if I was a Chapter serf to the Space Marines or in the Imperial Guard forces when he said ‘Legion’, but either was good enough. I certainly wasn’t going to explain the intricacies of by being in a mostly-decommissioned Guard regiment on permanent loan to a Space Marine Chapter who were also my personal patrons if they already didn’t the story of the Epistophy First and Second. I nodded as much as I could with my head injury and hoped that gesture meant the same thing to them. I also finally remembered High Gothic was a gendered language and I was a woman.

‘Quod? Lupum? Corvini? Ferri?’

That was one of those who/what/when/where questions, though I didn’t know which. At least he had taken to talking slowly and clearly and simply like I was either damaged in the head or barely spoke the language, both of which were accurate.

‘Lupum.’ Had the reinforcements from the Raven Guard arrived? That would explain why I didn’t know the regiment, and his confusion of _which_ Space Marine Chapter I worked for. Had a Iron Hands company shown up too, from the sound of it? Well, good. Maybe we’d even leave something of the hives when we were done shooting all the cultists and daemons, rather than having to resort to Exterminatus.

‘Spatium Lupi?’

I nodded more, then added, ‘Nigrum Lupi.’ The Black Wolves weren’t exactly the Space Wolves, being a rare successor Chapter, but you couldn’t expect outsiders to know the difference.

‘Nuntia? Quam sunt vobis nocere?’

I didn’t understand that or the next couple words. Maybe he was asking me if I was a professional pilot, I guessed from context clues.

‘Quam. Nocere?’ he asked slowly like that would help, then tried. ‘Consaucio? Incido? Injuria?’

‘Ah, how was I injured? ‘Incido’ like incision, maybe? Tempesta. Spatium tempesta. Immaterium tempesta?’

‘Quomodo tibi illud apparere, quando ex parte nauis nec ipsum proprium.’

The medicae turned to consult with one of his counterparts for awhile. The word ‘cerebrum’ came up a lot, so I knew they were talking about my head injury.

I could have followed more of the conversation (most of my High Gothic is medical, and in turn most of my medical vocabulary is High Gothic), but instead I relaxed into the perfectly respectable cot I was on. Common knowledge warned against sleeping with a concussion, but I was in a well-appointed sanatorium and there was certainly some auspex that would notice if I were bleeding into my brain.

‘Russ’ also got mentioned a lot. What, where they making the usual round of barbarian comments, then being amazed that I wasn’t covered fur cloaks and hung with talismans like a votive statue? I was in proper Guard uniform thank you very much, and the forge world was quite warm.

I had some questions I wanted to ask, but I lacked most of the words needed for _Are we in orbit? How long was I out? What regiment are you? Which Chapters are here? How many people made it off the_ Kraken’s Bane _? Have the Warp storms subsided?_

When next a medicae asked me questions, I tried some more of my own that I had put together in my head as best I could.

‘Quod navi?’ I probably wouldn’t recognize the name of the ship, but it was a start.

‘Navicula? Hoc est _Vindice Spiritus_.’

Not immediately helpful, but I wanted to know the ship when next I gave a report to Colonel Ravenna. I hoped the Thunderhawk I had been flying was alright, and these people would be kind enough to patch it up and return it, and me too.

‘Quod navicula, legio?’

‘Hoc est sexaginta tertia expeditione classis. Luna Lupi Astartes legion sunt hic. Bellum dominum Horus Lupercal se est in imperio.’

‘That’s very interesting. I could actually understand most of that. You’re the 63rd expeditionary regiment off some planet or other, and you have the Luna Wolves Chapter aboard too, and Lord Horus is your emperor. I did not see that coming.’

Black spots rose up in my vision, along with a deep nausea and sudden vertigo. Pressure started at my temples in pressed inward. My muscles locked up, then started to tremble. I forgot how to breathe completely and tasted bile.

Mercifully, I then passed out.

* * *

I woke feeling like I’d been kicked in the head, and my continued hyperventilating was not helping. I’d been picked up a Chaos ship.

But... I hadn’t seen anything particularly Chaosy, though admittedly that was in the slim section the ship directly in front of my eyes. It looked like a normal infirmary, smelled of counterseptics like one, except... I looked around for a shrine or mural to the Emperor as the Great Healer, but didn’t see one, nor could I smell the stick or two of incense that would be burning there.

They had to know I was Imperial. The Thunderhawk I’d been in hadn’t been defaced with the symbols of Chaos. My sword and gun had the proper aquilas stamped on them, as did my signet ring.

At that thought, I looked around for my weapons instinctively. Not that I could fight my way out of here on a good day.

Who were these Chaos cultists? I had thought the popular sentiment among the Lost and the Damned was scorn toward Horus, for having lost, or so Zoe told me. On the other hand, if there was anything I knew it was that no culture was monolithic, so it shouldn’t be surprising there was some faction that still clung to the idea of Horus as Chaos’s greatest champion and venerated him. Their insistence on speaking High Gothic was probably related to that need to cling to the olden days. Or maybe they’d been in the Eye of Terror so long they still remembered the Heresy as being only a few centuries ago. No, less likely, seeing as we were out practically in the Eastern Fringe, about as far from the Eye of Terror as one could get in this galaxy.

Wait. Beside my cot was my uniform, folded, my set of carapace armour, my weapons lined up on top.

I stopped myself from lunging for them. Didn’t want to give away I was awake, since no one seemed to have noticed yet. Slowly I flexed the muscles in all my limbs. The gun in my mechanical arm functioned. No restraints. No paralyzing drugs in my system.

I was so very confused I started to consider making a plan that didn’t consist of ‘Run to hangar bay in my hospital gown, shooting everyone in the way, and escape in sanctified Thunderhawk’, which admittedly had never been a very _good_ one.

What did they gain from not treating me like a prisoner, when I was hardly likely to escape or contact anyone? But if they’d been devious infiltrators, they wouldn’t instantly tell me who they were.

I needed to know what was going on. I needed to learn High Gothic on very short notice, obviously. I needed to find the hangar. I needed to figure out exactly who they were to bring word back. Which Chaos gods did they serve, what were their numbers like, what did they plan to do to relieve their brethren on-planet?

If only Zoe were here. Her High Gothic was much better than mine, from all the ancient religious texts she read. She knew Chaos cultists much better too.

I finally gave into the inevitable and sat up. Slowly, calmly, I checked my weapons, and found nothing wrong with them. My thought about leaping up seemed all the more absurd when just that almost made me throw up. An orderly came over to me and checked my vitals, not looking surprised that I was awake or I was immediately concerned for my weaponry.

I looked around. This was obviously a trauma centre for violent injuries, I’m enough of a medicae myself to recognise, so they’d be used to treating military personnel. To my right, an empty bed and a wall. To my left, an empty bed and an occupied one behind a curtain. Couldn’t see beyond that. Assuming there was nothing very strange about the acoustics, by the echoes I guessed it to be about a thirty-bed sanatorium. By the engine sounds and deck vibrations, I was guessing this to be a large ship, maybe an Astartes battle-barge or a naval battle cruiser or battleship. That meant this sanatorium was one of many, and probably close to whatever dock I’d been pulled in.

The orderly checking my head wounds called over another medicae and something beeped as I swooned. She was wearing an aquila.

My mind raced. This was part of the insignia on her uniform, not something hidden I had inadvertently glanced. Everyone else I’d seen had been in day-to-day scrubs, but, assuming cultural similarities, this dark red uniform embroidered with gold under a white cape was obviously the formal wear of medicae in this regiment, and this I would guess to be chief medicae of the sanatorium. The golden aquila was the central part of the heraldry.

Were they an Imperial ship recently captured by a Traitor Chapter? Yet I wouldn’t expect a military regiment to go quietly and serve new masters from fear. But if they’d turned to Chaos, I’d expect rampant mutations and the immediate defacing of all Imperial symbols, which their new masters would require anyway. I didn’t smell the sharp rot the Wolf part of my mind associated with Chaos, nor did the atmosphere seem tense or fearful, nor was anything even dirty which I just felt it should be if Chaos was involved.

This just didn’t fit. I’d never heard of the Luna Wolves. Maybe they were some loyalist Chapter who had picked up really strange and inauspicious names at some point because of my complicated vow to clear the honour of all Astartes by doing away with the legacy of their traitor brethren. Maybe they were some strange Brothers Repentius Chapter who had committed some sin in the past and now were desperately trying to atone for their brush with Chaos.

I really needed to stop daydreaming and find out more. This wasn’t helping.

Still, my hand on my bolt pistol relaxed. I was no spy like one of Zoe’s people, but even I understood the principal of acting friendly and not killing anyone unless in self-defence or because they stood before me and my eventual escape. No killing at all until I saw an actual daemon summoning. For all I knew, these people could be on my side. Up until the one sentence mentioning ‘Horus’, which I admittedly hadn’t understood that well, I had thought we were on the same side. The Emperor protects.

* * *

The medicaes finally decided that I must have been terribly traumatized by Warp exposure, because as my minor concussion began to heal and my broken nose gave no more trouble, there was nothing medically wrong with me that would explain my frequent panic attacks and my ‘forgetting’ all but the rudiments of their language. So they pretty much gave me a paper bag and told me to breathe into it whenever I felt the need.

It was communicated to me, in a lot of slow baby talk, that I had been put on medical leave until such time as I had recovered and could make a proper report. I was given a cot in a more long-term wing of the sanatorium and apparently left to my own devices with access to the unrestricted areas of the ship.

So useful, having the privileges of a military officer but not the responsibilities. If I spent more time leading my actual platoon and less on ‘special assignment’ from the Space Marines, I might have had no idea what to do with myself.

When I was well enough to leave my bed without falling over or throwing up, I found the least important deck-scrubber I could and asked in a loud and clear voice, ‘Libro. Locus. Quo?’

I got a look asking louder than words if I were retarded, but that had been pretty much what I was going for. A ship this large would have a library.

I could follow directions involving a pointed finger just fine, and to my relief, the books therein were largely written in the same script I was comfortable with, as I had expected would be the case. Some of the letters were formed a bit differently, but that may have been merely a different font being popular in the Administratum where they were published.

I read the edition notice pages carefully, in case they gave me insight into where in the galaxy they had originated. Somehow I was not expecting them to say ‘Published in the Eye of Terror’, but still.

In keeping with the spoken High Gothic, the first dozen books I examined were ancient works from M30, naturally not in translation, though the codices or dataslates were new and pristine, so they had been transcribed recently. The only books I saw that didn’t seem to be in High Gothic were in probably-human language I didn’t recognize or obviously xeno ones. None were in Tau, so I couldn’t hazard a translation. At least my Low Gothic was a direct linguistic descendant of old High Gothic, so I would have plenty of cognates to draw from. Unlike my birth language or Fenrisian, which haven’t had a common ancestor with Gothic in fifteen thousand years, and only the most diligent of scholars can find common roots through the proto-Gothic of the Dark Age of Technology.

At least I was good with languages. The teaching machine that had implanted the basics of Low Gothic and Fenrisian in me had broken back open the parts of my brain that usually degrade by age twelve, or so I like to think of it, so I now learn more quickly and thoroughly than adults can usually manage. Not supernaturally fast, but still.

The chatter of voices around me saying things I didn’t understand grated. I could almost remember being hooked up to the teaching machine, the words filling my head and I didn’t understand and didn’t understand and I would go mad under it all. It had to make sense, I had to save my sanity... I shuddered and tried to shake myself out of it. That was a long time ago and I was as sane as I’d ever been.

With a sigh, I called up the contents of the first dataslate and started to read.

* * *

‘I’ve seen you in here often lately. Are you on medical leave?’

‘Yes.’ I added carefully, ‘My head injury left me somewhat rattled, so I have been learning to speak again.’

I saw a slightly exaggerated wince. ‘Perhaps you would like to practice speaking aloud then? Your word choice was correct, but your pronunciation and intonation could use work. Those were the most unusual mondegreens.’

‘I would hate to impose.’

‘Nonsense. I’m an iterator, after all. Talking to people is my job.’

‘Then you must want some time off,’ I said, but followed the old man to his table. My instincts screamed he was a man of the Emperor, but ‘iterator’ wasn’t an Ecclesiastical title I knew. Then again, there were more priestly titles than there regiments in the Guard, it seemed.

‘No, no. Your name, young lady?’

‘Dot Katai.’ No one I’d asked had heard of my regiment. ‘I have seen you in this archive chamber a lot as well.’

‘Some research I’ve been doing, after Sixty-Three-Nineteen. Which fleet do you come from?’

I noticed he didn’t give his name. Being old, he might be someone important and would expect me to recognize him if he did. I wouldn’t know him from the Ecclesiarch, of course, and I couldn’t even tell you the name of the current Ecclesiarch for that matter.

‘The fleet of the Black Wolves Chapter.’

‘One of Russ’s fleets?’

‘Yes.’

‘What are you reading?’

‘Everything.’ I was going in alphabetical order. Even as my fluency grew, my understanding did not improve. There were definitely loyalist books around, speaking of the Imperium as ‘us’ and some of Guilliman’s works, for instance. These books kept throwing around terms I didn’t know, even after reading a dictionary, and concepts that sounded old-fashioned or heretical. There was a lot of variations in the Imperial Cult across the galaxy, but still. ‘What theology are you researching?’

‘Iterators research things other than local superstitions, you know, but at the moment I have been looking into primitive beliefs about Immaterium phenomena.’

I really didn’t know what priests normally researched, actually. I knew about Zoe’s academic papers, had a copy of her latest draft of her new book _Constructions of the Sacred Feminine in Imperial Thought_ on my mobile, but as she would tell me being an academic in religious studies was vastly different than being a theologian with a vocation.

‘Daemon worship?’ Why was I digging deeper into theological matters? Going to say the wrong thing, back myself into a corner, get declared a heretic. This wasn’t home.

‘Yes, in the sort of areas where the walls between Immaterium and the Materium are unusually thin and phenomena are attributed to local gods or demons.’

‘Ah, low scale daemon-worshipping cults on feral worlds.’ If they were only worshipping local, fake gods, missionaries could bring them around to the proper veneration of the Emperor. If they could actually summon daemons into the Materium, they’d have to be purged, and if we were lucky it would be before the entire planet was tainted. Tainted more literally than theologically, as in being a seething mass of puss filled with screaming things that were once human. ‘That’s what the Imperial Army is for.’ These people used an odd term for the Guard as opposed to formal High Gothic form I’d seen once or twice before on the most official of Munitorium documents.

‘I should hope the light of reason to be effective in some cases.’

‘Sorry. I did not mean to imply your missionary work is not important.’

‘The spread of the Imperial Truth will do away with many ignorant superstitions. Though there are things out there not so easily explained by _doctrina_.’ He looked lost in thought, probably about those daemons he’d been talking about earlier.

I was more thinking about his last word. I had been reading it as ‘techno-theology’, but why would he have switched from talking about the Imperial Cult battling beliefs in deities other than the God-Emperor to wording things in terms of the Omnissiah? If someone from my world had said something like that, they’d have finished that sentence with ‘science’, but this was an Imperial native.

Should I venture something about the Machine God? But the Ecclesiarchy didn’t really like the details of the Mechanicum’s worship any more than they did the personal cults of Space Marines Chapters, a.k.a. things outside their control. So ‘For Russ and the Allfather’ was right out. I knew too much about what the tech-priests actually believed, not what the Ecclesiarchy officially reported about how it should be interpreted, from listening to Zoe go through spy reports about the secrets of their cults. I’d trip myself up.

‘As long as bullets still work, it’s okay,’ I said dumbly, remember that I still had to make some sort of a response.

‘Not always...’

‘Grenades then.’ I started one of the standard litanies I knew in High Gothic. ‘Domine, benedic hoc tuam frag grenade ut cum illo Potes flarent inimicos tuos ad vegrandis bits, in misericordia tua.’

He chucked a bit. ‘You military types are straight-forward. We academic types think too much and forget the point sometimes.’

I nodded sagely. I lived with Zoe after all.

‘You do sound surprisingly knowledgeable about the subject though.’

‘Not more than any other officer.’ Any other officer married to a self-made Radical Inquisitor. Was he an Ordo Malleus Inquisitor or something? If so, I had no idea what I might have stumbled into? Or maybe I was too good at pretending I knew what I was talking about and he had extrapolated that well beyond the actual extent of my knowledge.

‘Are superstitions about daemons common on your home world? I gather it must be one distant from Terra since I cannot recognise the occasional words in your native language you keep using.’

‘Sorry.’ I did really need to stop throwing in stray words in one of my native languages whenever I couldn’t think of the right High Gothic words or an immediate euphemistic work-around. ‘But no, we never held with such things. We did not always know of the Emperor, but we were no cultists of the Ruinous Powers,’ I insisted firmly. It was even true.

He gave me a slightly odd look I couldn’t interpret. Had I sounded too defensive, like I was hiding something? ‘That is for the best then,’ he finally concluded.

‘Yes.’ Man, conversations were difficult sometimes.

He changed the subject, for which I was grateful. ‘Are you having any troubles here, so far from your home fleet?’

‘No. Everyone has been very nice to me. You keep feeding me and everything even though no one is quite sure what my medical problems are or quite what to do with me.’

‘Are you lonely?’

Lonely? I was a little too panicky to be bored, that’s what I was. I listened to medicaes gossip about medical techniques and their personal lives, but had no intention of revealing I was a medicae too to join in. I didn’t want them to figure out I was stealing from them, little things only a professional would know how to find or use around a sanatorium, in case I needed them. I knew how they did inventories, of all things no one would have dared change since the Administratum set down the policies ten thousand years ago, and how to not get caught. I was pretending to understand the language less and be more addled than I was.

I avoided casual conversation with anyone in case I gave myself away as a loyal Emperor-worshipper or said something they found heretical, depending on their true allegiance, whatever it turned out to be. I didn’t want to ask too many questions that would inherently tip my hand, something I did instantly every time I opened my mouth somehow.

Probably the only thing saving me was how badly I really did speak the language. Most of what I did speak, I was using context clues to guess what words or phrases meant. While my word choice would more native-sounding than it deserved to be, I was probably wrong about the details and specifics of exactly what the things I was saying meant. Phrases I mentally translated as familiar Imperial idioms by context were often nonsensical to me when I tried to work them out word by words. I wasn’t good at languages in the long run because I was good at understanding individual words, unless I immediately saw an etymology I recognized, but because I was good at guessing what sentences as a whole basically meant when someone said them. Sort of like watching _When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth_.

I spent most of my time in the archive chambers. So far today I had read a boring and highly technical theological manual about proper care and maintenance of the machine-spirits of tank engines and a guide to tactics written by Guilliman that I’d read before. Wouldn’t have been my first choices normally, but what if my reading history gave away too much? And sort of remembering what Guilliman was going to say made it easier to decode the words. Besides, I liked all books.

I still had such a mystery. They mostly acted like Imperials, but without most of the trappings that were as inherently part of the Imperium as the space ships. No shrines or turns of phrase I recognized. So many things so noticeable in their absence. But no Chaos orgies or baby-eating. Every individual person I met, I couldn’t imagine them as a cultist, like how I’d automatically started treating this man like he was of Adeptus Ministorum. They were obviously a rich fleet by their abundance of archeotech and quality weapons among the Guardsmen.

I’d seen a few veterans Space Marines at a distance in the well-maintained relic armour of their Chapter. I didn’t recognize their off-white lined with black heraldry, but I was familiar with very few Chapters other than my own. The black wolves on their pauldrons made me want to like them, for all that it was a slightly different symbol than we used at home. Their breastplates lacked any of the usual aquilas or imperialis icons, which was almost as strange as if everyone had been naked, but I’d seen a few aquilas elsewhere.

‘I’m okay.’ I didn’t really know what to say.

‘Forgive my asking, it’s simply that I’d seen you a few times and never seen you speak to anyone or have anyone speak to you. I have heard remembrancers complain about difficulties interacting with people within the formal military structure while they are outside of it.’

Were remembrancers the younger acolytes of full ‘iterators’ in the Ecclesiarchy hierarchy? My etymologies only told me, unhelpfully, that ‘remembrancer’ might have something to do with ‘remembering’, while ‘iterator’ sounded like ‘iteration’, repeating. ‘It’s okay,’ I repeated. ‘People are friendly enough. And they know I’m a soldier.’ _You’re a very nice person too for asking? ...Or did I miss that you’re actually a commissar or something?_

‘We lucky iterators have always been on the outside of things, but I do hope that these questions of military versus civilian authority get smoothed out without upsetting the Warmaster too much.’

There was a dispute between the Guard or the Astartes and local branches of the Administratum? Or maybe a rogue governor? God-Emperor on Terra, I hoped it wouldn’t bring the Inquisition down on us all.

On the other hand, he had definitely said Warmaster. I knew now, for instance, that the term I’d translated as ‘emperor’ when I first arrived was a generic meaning ‘leader’, but this one translated very literally. I knew the term was still in occasional loyalist use, I’d heard of the Macharian Crusade a few centuries back, but very, very rarely and not in any sector near me and it was considered rather unlucky and tempting fate.

Did Chaos fleets even have logistic troubles? Did Chaos Champions sit around in meetings with their Dark Mechanicum adepts and ‘Dark Administratum’ bureaucrats and talk about how a breakdown in the water recycling system meant they’d have to go resupply on-planet or that they were all out of live goats for their evil rituals and would have to resort to the ratting cats temporarily? And who would respect them then, if they were the sort of cheap, cut-rate heretics who couldn’t even afford goats for their rituals? Next thing you knew they’d start putting the leftover bits of their sacrificial victims in the freezer and pulling them out to microwave and sort of jiggle a bit next time they needed to summon a daemon. I barely avoided cackling aloud at the mental images.

‘I just do whatever my NCOs tell me, so don’t ask me.’ Or my wife. She assuredly had strong feelings about military versus civilian authority and why the Imperium was doing it wrong, but I couldn’t remember what they were at the moment.

‘Would you refuse to obey an order that went against the edicts of the Crusade?’

‘Maybe.’ I would do my best to mysteriously misplace the order until the danger passed, like a good subordinate. And I would lie outrageously about what I had or had not done, not because anyone would believe me, but because they often found it convenient to pretend that they did. But more importantly, what response would get me in less trouble here? Was he trying to peg me as a disobedient traitor who defied my Emperor-blessed superiors or did he want me to say I’d shoot a superior officer who’d fallen to Chaos faster than a commissar with a bad itch?

‘My apologies. I did not mean to make you uncomfortable.’

‘It’s fine.’ I was glad how easy it had been to pick up that phrase considering how often I used it. ‘My wife worries about philosophical questions and things like that a lot.’

‘And you don’t?’

‘Sometimes.’ My wife had half a doctorate in philosophy, while I’d rarely looked up from my maths homework when she presented hypothetical ethical scenarios to me. ‘...I’m not very articulate about it, not like her. When I have a real moral dilemma, my thoughts run around in circles without getting anywhere when I dwell on them. I do things because they “feel right”, not because I usually understand why I feel that way.’ Zoe would sigh at me in such disappointment. ‘I have morals that I think are right, but a lot of times I do things that go against them because the alternative would be worse. There are plenty of things I’m not proud of, but I just try to do the best I can, or the least bad.’

‘No one could ask more. The Emperor spills blood too.’

I had no what that idiom meant, though I’d seen it before. From this context, it sounded almost like ‘Even the God-Emperor must make compromises to circumstance’, but that was a bizarre thing for anyone, loyalist or traitor, to say.

‘What... Well, I suppose iterators don’t answer to anyone,’ I trailed off, fishing for information.

‘It’s true the Corps of Iterators answers only to the Emperor in theory, but we do have our hierarchies, and we too wonder what will happen with the newly created Council of Terra taking on many of the prerogatives that once belonged to the War Council. At least military matters still belong to Warmaster Horus, but that hardly helps us. Iterators of all people are aware of the confusion all of us have felt sometimes since the Emperor retired from the Crusade after Ullanor.’

I was so frustrated I wanted to scream. Nothing made any sense. I felt like I almost had an idea bubbling up from my subconscious, but I still didn’t know what it was. So close. So many pieces, but how did they all fit together? The nice old man gave me a concerned look. ‘Sorry, I’m still addled from being tossed around by Warp storms. Has this fleet been caught by any lately?’

‘No, we’re been lucky, but I know they have been disrupting communication all over the galaxy. I assume that was why you were sent as a courier to the Warmaster’s fleet rather than using astropathic messages.’

A belief which said a lot about why no one had bothered to take a psyker to the contents of my head in order to communicate. Any message sent in person would have to be as far from time-sensitive as possible to be worth the effort.

‘Yes, Warp storms have made me a messenger. If only I had not been separated from my Navigator and tossed around the Warp for who knows how long. That reminds me, what day is it? The full date and everything?’

He told me.

‘How fascinating. I can now tell my doctors I know what year it is and who the prime minister is and all that, and I need to go to a check up right now.’

He, not surprisingly, looked somewhat confused by my nonsensical babbling, but nodded and shook my hand. ‘If you would like to talk again and don’t find me here, ask for Kyril Sindermann.’

‘Thank you.’

I made it one whole deck before needing to breathe into my paper bag.

* * *

I have no idea how time travel works. I’d heard rumours and gossip it was possible, but to my knowledge no one ever did it on purpose, and almost certainly couldn’t, the Warp being what it is.

I’ve occasionally talked about experimenting with time travel, before immediately being told to shut up by everyone around me. Like how I’m also forbidden to play with cloning. Even though cloning isn’t magic.

Would I disappear in a shining paradox? Would I accidentally set events in motion leading to a stable time loop? Was I now in a divergent timeline? Could I ever go back to the future? Would Zoe be there if I did, or would she or I not have been born or whatnot? Had I stepped on any space-butterflies?

Everyone knew the story of an ork who, upon finding himself in the past due to the whims of the Warp, decided to kill his past-self to get a second copy of his favourite gun, resulting in the entire system being engulfed by a vicious paradox-storm of Warp energy. The story was used to illustrate what the greenskin mind was like, but for all I knew it could have been based on a real incident. You heard stories, maybe apocryphal maybe not, about ships responding to a distress call through the Warp only to find nothing there, then be attacked, then discover they had retrospectively responded to their own distress signal.

Zoe and I had plenty of plans for contingencies where we travelled back in time, say, ten or twenty years, or for meeting our future selves, like we had plans in the event of being replaced by identical robots. Which weren’t even a thing that was real. These were not relevant to being in the incredibly distant past and I was not even on Epistophy.

Whatever. If I was inherently doomed to failure, then I would fail. I didn’t really believe in retrospective determinism as a philosophy, but I had also never time travelled before to know the mechanics of that. If stable time loops were what inevitably happened, then it wouldn’t even really be my fault, but ‘fate’s’ or something. What were my options?

I had to do something. I had to try to change the future. As a human being, I could not see myself doing otherwise. Besides, being stuck on a soon-to-be Chaos ship was definitely somewhere I didn’t want to be.

Sure I might make things worse, but that risk didn’t seem much in comparison. I already came from a Bad Future where the Imperium was a tyrannical theocracy and things sucked for a whole lot of people and we were beset on all sides and entropy was slowly and inexorably dragging everything down toward decay and we had no dreams for the future.

Even considering I got caught by cultists and they tortured out of me everything I knew and they believed all of it, how much would it help them? I had a passing education in Imperial history, but I didn’t know a great deal about the details of the Horus Heresy, even those things that hadn’t completely been forgotten or suppressed. Most of the battles I’d heard of were massacres of loyalists by traitors, like the Istvaan Drop Site Massacre, so the traitors would hardly want them to go differently.

‘Don’t lower the disruptor shields on your flagship to invite the Emperor Himself aboard; it won’t end well’? The stories, and logic, indicated that was a desperate move on Horus’s part because the Siege of Terra was taking too long and he had to trying to end things before loyalist reinforcements arrived. Plus, Horus had been on his home ground and had every advantage he ever would... and the Emperor still won. I had no idea how Horus could actually beat Him, and the legends I’d always liked best said that the only thing that delayed Horus’s death long enough for him to wound His Divine Majesty was His deep love for His son, even fallen. Somehow I doubted that the Emperor cared for His favoured son would be a big secret.

How should I try to change things?

I should steal a ship and go to Terra and warn everyone. How, exactly? I didn’t know how to pilot anything larger than a Thunderhawk and they weren’t made for independent Warp travel. Anything larger would need a larger crew. Anything Warp-capable would need a Navigator, which I hardly had lying around. And I’d already heard that there were a lot of Warp storms at the moment. I was not surprised by the idea of the Chaos gods throwing around the power to disrupt loyalists and aid their own cultists, not with how much they had obviously invested in the Heresy.

Could I get a berth aboard an approved courier leaving this fleet and eventually getting me to Terra? Maybe? If I faked that I’d suddenly gotten my memories back after my brain damage and they told me I definitely need to go over there or something? But how would I ever get to talk to anyone important or get anyone to believe me? And getting into an unfortunate accident in transit and never making it to my destination seemed like such a convenient way for ‘fate’ to snap the rubber band of history back into its original configuration, if time worked that way.

What I really needed was more information about the past, particularly the current political climate. The distant past! How exciting, if I managed to forget all else for more than a moment. Men still lived who had heard the voice of God with their own ears. Hopefully my research would speed up a lot now that I actually understood the context, not to mention my continually improving command of the language. I didn’t think I was in immediate danger. Sure these people were going to fall to Chaos, but my observations made me think they hadn’t yet. I’d never exactly seen a group of people fall to Chaos in front of my eyes, but there had to be intermediate stages between normal people and frothing cultists. I could hopefully identify when things got far enough that I needed to drop everything and get out of here by any means possible whether I felt ready or not.

What had I given away so far? Sindermann could obviously tell I’d been distressed by the date, but the obvious assumption would be that I’d lost time. Ships usually arrived when they were supposed to, but arriving late was much more common than one showing up before it left. He probably thought I’d lost a year or two, maybe as much as a decade, which was in the realm of things that happened outside of urban legends. The Time Thief took her toll from space travellers.

There was no reason anyone should notice me, particularly anyone important. Hardly anyone had paid me hardly any attention so far. I had to keep blending in with the scenery, keep making myself useful and making myself seem busy so no one questioned me. Learn everything I could, make plans, carry them out.

With that made clear in my mind, I got to it. I picked up a piece of tech I’d commissioned from a tech-adept in exchange for being able to look at my mobile phone: a charger for that piece of electronics compatible with the local systems. I knew the necessary circuit diagram by heart, as did pretty much everyone from my planet who served off-world. It meant nothing to me, but I was a biologist. As the electrical engineer who had taught me it said, ‘Memorise this picture, redraw it perfectly, hand it to a tech-adept, and they will give you the adaptor you need.’

That meant I could actually use my mobile’s systems; I’d had it off to save the battery for if I absolutely needed it.

The first thing I did, I called up my favourite picture of Zoe on the screen and sighed. I had a little snapshot taped on one of the panels inside my artificial arm, but I worried I was going to forget all the little details.

The second thing I did was find an airlock and take a snapshot of what the monitor said the stars right outside looked like right then. My star map app took an hour to run, but reported that assuming the year I had input was correct, our galactic coordinates were right where other people said we were, nowhere near where I’d been in space either. There went my theory that _they_ were some Heresy-era ship that had gotten lost and fallen through a Warp portal to the distant future/present.

I couldn’t think of another good possibility to use to put off accepting the inevitable, but I still didn’t want to believe. I didn’t want to get swept away by this amazing and different world of the long-lost distant past, in case it would disappear from between my fingers like a fog under bright sun. The things I read about who these people were and what they believed were so interest now that I was no longer trying to fit my translations to fit with the doctrinal orthodoxy of my time. It made it seem like a fantasy novel or a dream, something fun to speculate or daydream about but not real.

Then I couldn’t disbelieve any longer.

I saw Horus.

There was no need for an introduction, no heralds to cry his name. I saw him walking across a distant corridor with some of his Luna Wolves and I knew.

This was no Chaos Champion using his name in vain. This was a Primarch.

Horus’s face was never depicted in Imperial arts, chiselled out of the oldest monuments. He was only depicted from behind, or with a daemonic, inhuman visage. But even I was familiar with depictions of the Emperor.

He towered above the normal Astartes like they would above me. He shone as if with the divine light of the God-Emperor, and he wasn’t even doing anything. He was not beautiful so much as magnificent, perfectly formed and crafted for war. I wanted to reach out and touch him, reach past his skin to his biohelices themselves, yet even I felt that would be heresy. Merely to bask in that which the Emperor had made was more than I was worth.

How great and glorious. How far fallen the brightest star, the most beloved son.

I backed back down the side corridor I had just come out of. No one among the crowd of crew and servants paid me any mind, let alone the distant Astartes. I walked backwards till I was sure I was at an angle to be out of sight, then I turned and ran.

An hour later still found me curled up in a foetal position in a broom cupboard. The very Warmaster of Chaos, the Arch-Heretic, right there!

It was all true, I couldn’t doubt anymore. I felt faint and dizzy and shook all over for awhile, but eventually I got bored of that and there were things to do.

* * *

I took from the sanatorium storeroom the uniform of a civilian Chapter-serf with only discreet bloodstains and a mop. I was no real spy like one of Zoe’s people, but like her I had been known to remove my rank insignias and wheel the tea tray to meetings I hadn’t been invited to when technically off duty. My superiors were not unaware of this, but my wife was chief among intelligencers in the sub-sector and they let us both get away with a lot on each other’s behalves.

Dignity as befits an officer is for people aren’t political appointees undeserving of their posts.

I told the shift supervisor of housekeepers in the Astartes barracks that I had had the Braxian flu for months and now that I was better I had been reassigned to this shift, in the middle of ship’s night for now. I handed over a note with a squiggly signature from my supposed previous supervisor, which I had forged with the assumption it would hardly be glanced at.

After all, I was on the ship already. I’d hardly snuck in considering we were _in space_. If I’d had some other job, people would notice me missing there. This was a proud Astartes battle-barge with a proud crew, not a lowly Naval cruiser staffed by conscripts and convicts chained to their guns. I just had to stop showing up for my janitorial shifts or give my supervisor an excuse about why I was going to be away for a while when I was ready to stop. I had given my name as Zoe Lanka, which meant nothing to anyone else here but would make me automatically look up upon hearing. Anyone who really made an effort would still be able to find me again if they really cared, but it was a layer against casual tripping-up.

Important people might not notice servants, but other servants did, and here the Chapter serfs didn’t already know who I was and know that that meant they should look the other way.

I was certainly not going to be assigned to cleaning the mediation-chambers of anyone important, as the lowest and newest of the Chapter-serfs present, but that wasn’t the point. I just wanted to hear the gossip from those so graced. After all, what was the point of being the most prestigious of servants if not to lord your special insight into the masters’ doings over everyone else? Not too much or you’d get replaced with someone more circumspect, but those above the stairs rarely noticed anything going on under it themselves. I was going to spend awhile getting the jobs that would normally be assigned to servitors until the initial testing and hazing wore off as I proved I was willing to do anything without complaint.

As expected: ‘There’s blood drying on the floor of Corridor B-3. Do you know this section of the ship or do you need someone to show you where that is?’

‘Please.’

‘Carlotta, show Lanka where B-3 is on your way to storage.’

‘I’d be glad to.’ The woman my new supervisor had directed my attention to was more than a head shorter than I was, and her uniform jumpsuit looked too large on her even though it was probably the smallest size they made. I tried to leave enough distance between us as I followed her to not feel like I was looking straight down.

I knew where the Astartes’ mediation-cells were, of course. All STC ships had pretty much the same layout and the _Æpandi Myrkrið_ , the _Howling Darkness_ as non-Fenrisians said, was a full battle-barge too. What I didn’t know was this set of servants’ designations and nicknames for particular hallways or chambers.

‘You’re new? It’s good to meet you. I’m Carlotta Bernadeta. Aren’t we lucky to be working for Adeptus Astartes? Even if I’m only cleaning things, I’m glad to be doing it here rather than anywhere else. I always feel so proud to be helping the Emperor’s Crusade run smoothly.’

‘Yes.’ This was a really awkward conversation for someone to be trying to have with me. I too was proud to be a vassal of the Astartes of the Black Wolf Chapter. I felt bad for a moment about taking advantage of people like myself and the Chapter-serfs I respected back home. I was going to do it, but in exchange, I had to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and actually see them as people, not future Chaos pawns.

‘B-3’s right over there, between B-2 and the intersection with C-4. There’s a supply cupboard down there if you need more disinfectant. Well, I’ll see you. Looks like Nilsen and Tamuz had an impromptu duel in the hall again. I’m glad that didn’t happen while we were in the way. How fortunate we are. How good our portion.’

‘That we can praise the Emperor’s glorious sovereignty for ever and ever,’ I replied automatically.

She looked back at me. Throne, she’d said something that happened to sound like a common liturgical prompt and I’d given the standard liturgical response. Stupid reflexes I’d been building for years working against me. She had just meant she was glad Space Marines hadn’t decided the perfect time to punch each other in the face was when normal people were trying to oil hinges and sand armour. For that matter, her tone had been slightly ironic, adding an extra implication of ‘but we still have to clean up after idiots’.

‘You too? It really is good to meet you. Maybe I’ll see you at the meeting later.’

There was a meeting later? I supposed my supervisor would tell me when and where that was going to be, since I was new to the department.

Anyway, I got to work. Space Marine blood congealed and dried even faster than normal blood and left stains something fierce once it did so. I’d see what layers I could get up easily before getting out the thicker gloves and the highly concentrated cleaning supplies, disinfectant, and a scrub-brush.

I’d cleaned up spills of much worse things in the Apothecarium on the _Howling Darkness_. Not to mention in my time as a biology grad student. The day I couldn’t mop a floor would be the day I turned in my biology degree and... went to go mop floors for a living, I suppose.


	3. Pit fighting hook-ups unfinished snippet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sigismund/Kharn/Sevatar [PG-13]

‘Barracks assignments were made well in advance,’ Khârn informed him. Sigismund did not remotely believe him and wouldn’t have even without the smirk.

An unreadable expression that might have been shock or threat assessment had passed over Sevatar’s face in the first moment, but it eased into a smirk to match Khârn’s, as if he had been in on this in the first place, that showed nothing of his real thoughts.

‘Is this your way of saying “Get a room?”’ the Night Lord asked flippantly.

‘I don’t know. You could have chosen a 10.e.iii if you were going to disqualify yourself, but didn’t.’

‘Seemed like too much trouble when I’d already gotten bored.’

‘Play nice and no unsanctioned rematches will count towards your score.’

‘Did you want to referee?’

Khârn shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t say no. Are you up for it?’

‘I’m as fresh as a spring rain in the uphive. Why wouldn’t I be? As long as I don’t have to give lessons. I lose interest fast.’

Sevatar was obvious as exhausted from thirty hours of non-stop fighting as Sigismund felt. ‘This isn’t my first tournament,’ Sigismund informed him.

He knew his Legion had something of a reputation for being sticks in the mud, but he wasn’t stupid and _he_ wasn’t a virgin, whatever could be said about most of his brothers. Of course anyone with an eidetic memory knew regulation 10.e.iii said ‘No making out in the ring or you’re both disqualified. Further, if you think you can’t make it to the nearest servitor closet before fucking, know that our primarch will probably kill you for taking up space where there was supposed to be fighting going on.’

Everyone knew the gladiatorial tournaments got a little... fraught with tension. The host Legion’s casual attitude towards ‘bros helping each other out’ helped make everything that happened seem to natural and obvious. Good thing the Emperor’s Children didn’t run things or they’d make everything all cloying and complicated.

Sigismund had to admit the idea had even more appeal than ever at the moment. He had been planning on a shower and sleep, but he definitely felt a spark of interest at the thought of his hands touching Sevatar’s still sweaty skin again and all the strength against him. He wanted a rematch against the cheating bastard, but he wasn’t absolutely furious. He’d rather his winning streak be intact, but he’d had to laugh at the way his opponent had denied him victory even in capitulation and to respect his fighting prowess from one of the best duels he’d had in his life. If Khârn was there to keep things from getting out of hand, so much the better.

‘Will I need to instruct you in finishing what you start, if you’ve got an attention span that short?’

‘I was the one who resolved things, if you don’t recall.’

‘You did finish first. Try to last longer this time.’

‘If you’re going to talk all night, _I’ll_ get bored.’ Khârn shoved Sigismund in the shoulder away from the doorframe.

Sigismund was a bit grateful. The first step was always awkward. Social interaction was so needlessly complicated. You had to issue challenges when you wanted to fight and you had to be in the right setting or people looked at you strangely. You couldn’t just reach over and kiss someone because you had decided right that moment that you wanted to fuck them. Space Marines were usually more straightforward than mortals, but he still wasn’t free from the burden of having to communicate his ideas to other people, even if he knew what he meant.

After a fight like they’d had, Sigismund knew exactly how Sevatar was going to move with the ease of dance partners who’d long practiced a routine together. Even as they pushed forward press lips together bruisingly hard and around to explore each other’s mouths with their tongues and pulled back to bite, they fit together easily.

He couldn’t get complacent, though. He’d already been one-uped by surprise once today. Khârn sat on the edge of Sevatar’s cot, watching them, and Sigismund kept a sliver of his awareness on him, but not much. Couldn’t afford much considering the threat right here.


	4. Prompt Snippets

_Bjorn the Fell-handed_

‘That bastard,’ Björn would grumble by the early hours of the morning, ‘if you had met him... Always stealing the best fights and the beer and the women. Why I remember when those bats nested in his beard and he had to shave it off. He whined so much even the Emperor threatened to shove his spear up his arse if he did not shut up. And then there was when...’

The Chapter agreed they should stop waking him up so often and they should really keep track of how much alcohol the dreadnought was going through through a straw.

*

‘What’s an Ecclesiarchy?’

‘Uhhh... Adeptus Ministorum?’

‘And what’s an Inquisition?’

‘I’m sorry, honoured dreadnought, I can’t immediately think of Fenrisian equivalents for the terms and I don’t know what you called them in the days of old.’

‘Well explain, laddy.’

_Some time later,_

‘I’ve got to tell Leman that Guilliman owes him money now, but on the other hand, he lost that bet with Lorgar.’

Everyone laughed dutifully.

‘Shut up, that wasn’t a pun on purpose!’

*

_Sejanus/Loken, really vanilla sex_

‘It was adorable. They never got anywhere!’

‘Tarik...’ Sejanus ground out, like he would be threatening revenge as soon as he thought up a good enough one even if it was not his forte.

‘Neither of them would make the first move; they just kept apologising to each other.’

‘Tarik, I’m going to kill you.’

‘Garviel Loken from the 10th?’ asked Aximand.

‘Yep, that kid.’

‘He has a lot of potential.’

‘Potential, maybe. Then the Stormbird docked and they were both blushing so bright red that Angron said--’

‘I hate you.’ Sejanus looked anywhere but at Torgaddon as though that could make him deaf, or preferably somewhere else.

‘No, do tell.’ Abaddon’s grinned widened.

*

_Fulgrim/Ferrus, mermaids_

‘Come on, get in.’

Ferrus can’t quite tell where Fulgrim’s voice was coming from. The echoes off rocks are confusing and the reflections are all wrong, where his primarch brain should have been able to triangulate automatically.

‘The water’s perfect.’

Drops cling to Fulgrim’s skin as he surfaces or trace little rivulets from his pale hair down his neck, inviting the eye down his chest and further, further down...

Something’s wrong, or maybe it’s just another reflection. But it almost seems like there’s something else in there with Fulgrim, something sinuous, a snake or eel maybe, with gleaming scales that look slimy but would probably be smooth to the touch. Something that makes him want to touch.

‘Ferrus.’

His mouth is dry. He follows the siren song. It’s Fulgrim. Fulgrim is beautiful and can be easily distracted, but he always means well. It can’t be too deep if Fulgrim is standing there, even if he can’t see his legs.

Water rusts iron and there are things beneath that love to taste the last breath of a drowning man.

Ferrus wakes up and almost remembers.

*

_Ferrus Manus and a compromising situation_

Fulgrim was very loud, which had its upsides and its downsides.

‘We appreciate your assistance in the Warhound being fixed. At this time point.’

The dull machine-generated tone made sarcasm hard to pin down, even when it obviously was. So repairing the Titan had taken slightly longer than expected. He hadn’t said he’d get on it right away. ...Okay, he had, but he hadn’t meant it that way. Extenuating circumstances. Entirely Fulgrim’s fault.

Fulgrim’s fault for being so pale and pretty Ferrus had wanted to see him smeared with oil and engine grease, darkened and dirty and indignant over it but too distracted by how much he liked it to stay angry for long. Fulgrim’s fault for moaning so loudly when Ferrus touched him and held him against cold metal and screaming when Ferrus pushed into him just right. So maybe they’d been overheard. By everyone. Again.

‘Just hurry up and return to combat. We’re wasting time.’

‘Acknowledged, Lord Manus. Unit will return to combat as soon as disinfecting is complete.’

*

_Khârn and Sigismund friendly fighting/makeouts/sex_

‘That’s twenty-three/twenty-three for the day. Want to stop now or go for a last tie-breaker bout?’

Sigismund grinned back at the War Hounds captain. His brothers in the VIIth called him too young, too wild, too aggressive, but Khârn could always be counted on to give as good as he got and to take him seriously even when he was barely out of scout armour. ‘Why? What else did you have in mind for a tie-breaker?’

Just so, Khârn’s expression took on a distinctly different turn. If he hadn’t had anything in mind before, he did now. ‘There are other ways of deciding who ends up on top.’

Sigismund felt a frizzle of heat run through him and he liked it. He was worn out from all the fighting they’d been doing and the blood loss and bruises, but he couldn’t stand to feel tired with a spark like that. He lowered the point of his sword, and Khârn was already stowing away his axes. ‘The battle-cages were getting a little repetitive.’

‘Wouldn’t want fighting to get _boring_.’

Khârn’s mouth was hot and wet, and Sigismund wasn’t sure what to do with his hands except grip his shoulders bruisingly hard. From the way Khârn’s hands tightened on the sides of his head, it was the right thing to do.

He’d never been more grateful the War Hounds preferred to spar out of their armour as when Khârn shifted his one of his hands to the back of his head and other down between them.

‘You’ve never had a man inside you before, have you, but you’re so eager for it. I’m going to do you right now. You want to be fucked ‘til you can’t walk, don’t you, and I’ll spread your legs and give it to you.’

Sigismund was harder than he’d ever been and burned with an excitement he’d never felt without blood coating his sword. He grinned and went in for another bruising kiss, moving his hands down to grab Khârn’s ass and getting a groan out of him. ‘You can try. I don’t intend to lose.’


	5. New York AU

  


Your name is Erebus and things _were_ going just the way you wanted them to. The election campaign was going great, with Horus Lupercal sweeping the polls with his charisma and war hero stick and calling out his old man in Washington. Your nominal boss, Lorgar Aurelian was getting the Bible Belt vote in and most of the time his father/your partner-in-crime Kor Phaeron was able to slip him enough carbamazepine to keep him from being too much of an embarrassment. You have to cover for everyone else, from the latest FDA scandal at Death Guard Pharma or whatever drug charges Fulgrim's in court for this week. Still, your way to the Secretary of State position seemed in the bag.

Then this kid turned up on your doorstep.

Argel Tal. Fifteen years old. From Sidney, Iowa. Belongs to you according to court order after the death of his mother last month. You make one mistake sixteen years ago while very drunk and now this.

You can't even be proud of the kid. He's _dumb_. He's a good-two-shoes who attracts bad company like ants to sugar. He should be staring in an after-school special every week. He's earnest and honest and naïve. He keeps going on about how nice a person his mother was, and hell if you'd know. You barely met her. He's moody and constantly giving into peer pressure and terrible at problem solving and a _teenager_. And he calls you about once a week from Brooklyn because he managed to get lost on the subway and can't figure out how to get back to your apartment.

Your life has turned into the sort of feel-good chick-flick you consider hopelessly tedious. You don't want to grow as a person and realize there are important things in life beyond your job. You just want to control national opinion, then lie on your couch and drink with Game of Thrones on. If you're lucky, being a single dad will somehow help you get laid with someone who thinks that makes you responsible.

other characters:

Khârn: Argel Tal's new best friend. He's the captain of the football team and a pretty great guy. This is despite the fact his father, Angron, has pretty serious brain damage from his football player days and doesn't have the slightest idea how to raise his kids after his own abusive foster care upbringing. He goes to this rather upscale prep school on a sports scholarship.

Cyrene: A nice blind girl Argel Tal has a crush on. She likes him back. She's going to ruin his life someday. Obviously. Erebus is sure. Another scholarship student.

Lotara Sarrin: Captain of the girl's basketball team. She's gotten thrown out of a couple of schools before, but her family keeps throwing money at new ones. She and Khârn are dating.

Guilliman: ruling San Francisco as a separatist nation-state, I mean, governor of California

Perturabo: A military contractor. Probably a John Bircher back in the day.

Curze: A judge by day, a vigilante serial killer by night. So he's Lunatic from Tiger & Bunny. I'm not even trying.

Sevatar: That weird kid at school. He's always laughing at his own jokes, but no one else gets them or the bits they do get make them very uncomfortable. His grades are great because he knows all the answers even though he never studies or goes to class. Curze's son.

Sigismund: Khârn's friend and quarterback of the football team. Probably the most popular guy in school, particularly in the jock crowd, but not because he's trying to be. He's kind of a jerk and only really interested in sports.

Sanguinius: An artist. Horus's fiancé. Even though I'm pretty sure Horus is the Republican candidate. This seems to be an AU where everyone's inexplicably much less concerned with homosexuality. Or maybe it's the future or something. Sometimes they argue because Sanguinius is much more liberal than Horus is. Erebus keeps trying to manage their relationship for maximum media benefit.

 

The bar wasn’t closing for another hour, but Erebus’s phone needed charged. The commentators and social media sites were abuzz with the usual chatter about how everything that had happened today would change the face of the election completely, as they had been every day for months and would be for many months more until the election. The more respectable nonpartisan polls showed maybe a 0.5% change in some non-contested states, well within the margin of error.

On the upside, he had half a dozen gifs to pass around until at least one went viral. He particularly liked the one comparing Rogal Dorn to a walrus. He considered taking a snapshot of Malcador staring into his whiskey and adding a caption about this being the face of someone who had to babysit a giant infant, but then he’d have to find a new bar and that wasn’t worth it. Maybe after Malcador had gone back to D.C. the bartender wouldn’t take his side.

Or not. He’d rather his line of empty martini glasses be off-limits too. Politics would drive a man to drink. Maybe it was time for two or three hours sleep on his couch, then some tea before grabbing his laptop off the floor again.

Erebus stretched, adjusted his glasses, and ran a hand over twenty hours' growth of stubble on his head and jaw line. At least his hairline was naturally receding, so his scalp was only colored by his tattoos, as anyone would expect a man of religious background to have.

Movement also reminded him he was sore all over even with the alcohol dulling everything, but what did it matter if walking would be uncomfortable, he was going to take a cab anyway. They only fucked when Horus was angry or Erebus wanted something, and this had definitely been the former, but whatever. He wasn’t his boyfriend, Horus had a boyfriend; he was the man who had made him what he was today and what he was going to be in the future. Indispensable. He had a lot of backup plans if Horus ever got into his head to dispose of him, but he was all talk when it came to acting like everything was his own idea and he didn’t really _need_ Erebus. Easier to stroke his ego, among other things, and keep to himself when he wanted to roll his eyes.

He stumbled home alright, even if the lights inside his building were way too bright for this time of night, morning. He was practically to his door before he noticed there was some kid sitting on a duffel bag across the door of his apartment.

He looked like he’d been there for a while and had fallen asleep. Really, what use were the door guards these days if they let anyone into the building. He looked too clean to be homeless long-term, though. Which one of the neighbors’ kids had invited someone over then not been there to let him in? Why was he sitting in Erebus’s doorway with such intent? Had his contacts in the commissioner’s office sent over one of Fulgrim’s underage prostitutes so he could get the story out of him before the litigations went public?

The teenager woke from his light drowse and looked up at Erebus. Those bushy eyebrows were somehow very familiar. ‘I’m sorry! I’m waiting for one of your neighbors. I think I have the right apartment number.’ He looked down at a google maps print-out he had clutched in one hand.

It was his number. ‘You’re blocking my door.’

‘I didn’t mean to get here so late, but I couldn’t afford a non-stop bus from Des Moines. I said in my letter--’

‘What letter?’

‘Did it not get here yet?’

Hell if he knew. Who in the world still sent snail-mail and to this address?

‘I’m Argel Tal. Your son. I’m supposed to live with you since Mom... died.’

There was not enough alcohol in the world for this.


	6. Curze/Sevatar/Corax

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the Curze/Sevatar/Corax fic that ended up being edited into the Night Lords chapter of All This and Heaven Too

Corax had never before found reason to use such flowery terms as “lewd” and “lascivious”, but now he felt he knew what they meant and could think of no better way to describe the base, vulgar, and wanton things Curze was doing to his first captain.

He almost wished not being seen weren’t so very simple for him, that the very act of wishing to go unnoticed didn’t accomplish it in and of itself. It was always going to be embarrassing to walk in on this, but he would feel less mortified if he hadn’t been aware of how very long he had been staring in shock. The uninformed might think their Legions had similarities in striking quickly than returning to the shadows, hence their joint expedition, but the Night Lords lingered in the dark and _did things_ there.

Of course Curze would be doing something so viscerally wrong it would never have occurred to Corax. It was no secret that some of his brother indulged in the pleasures of the flesh with each other, but it seemed another matter entirely to turn lust on an Astartes. As brothers they stood on equal footing, while he felt in his bones a disgust towards one who would use his own son in such a way. That Curze’s inner sanctum was strung with chains of skinned and mouldering corpses was worse, he told himself, but less surprising somehow.

Curze’s first captain--Sevatar his name was--knelt between his spread thighs, making wet, obscene noises as he sucked at his primarch’s cock. Curze had his hands in his hair, tugging and directing, sometimes dropping to caress the curve of his neck and then pressing his thumbs inwards as he thrust deeper into his mouth. Sevatar’s hands reflexively tightened on his knees as he gagged and choked, but he didn’t try to pull away.

In the darkness the Night Lords preferred, even Corax’s eyes had trouble picking out colours. He could see the dark stains on Sevatar’s pale Nostraman skin, but could not see the bright _red_ that he would be able to in better light. It was hard to tell the difference between flesh blood and the older blood and fluids leaking from the corpses that covered every surface.

It was rotten to the core, but without the simplicity of if his brother had _merely_ been raping his first captain. Even when Curze loosened his grip, Sevatar leaned into him, teasing and licking and groping for him with his mouth like a still-blind puppy searching for its mother’s teat to suckle.

Curze jerked his hips in sharp spasms, in stabbing thrusts. His drawn, skull-like face was twisted in a contradictory mixture of violent glee and sick fondness. Sevatar twitched instinctively with pain but was unable to pull away from the hands holding his head in place as his primarch finished fucking his throat raw and came in his mouth.

Sevatar was still choking from casual injuries and suffocation as he was pushed away. Curze lifted him up by a handful of hair to kiss him hard and brutal, sharp teeth shredding lips. Sevatar kissed back, until Curze seemed to tire of it and dropped him abruptly. 

Sevatar landed with feline grace and, with another cat-like gesture, used the back of his hand to scrape trails of blood and come from his chin. Corax was surprised for a moment when he didn’t lick his paws clean, but Curze fixed that oversight by lifting his hand to his own mouth, his teeth drawing as many new stains of blood as his tongue took away.

‘Are we done here, sire, or are you planning to return the favour?’ he asked, voice scratchy from the damage to his throat.

How anyone could want those sharp-filed teeth near sensitive areas he couldn’t imagine, but Sevatar’s erection was hard and leaking still.

‘Patience, Sevatar. I’m not done with you.’

‘It’s fortunate I’m almost as well known for my patience as my serene disposition.’ Despite his long-suffering sigh, he remained where he was, like a dog at its master’s feet, and leaned his head against Curze’s thigh. Not surprising considering the sheer gravitational attraction of Space Marine to primarch, even one of the ones who did not deserve it.

‘Are you tired of watching yet?’

‘Father?’ the first captain asked, confused, but Curze’s eyes were locked directly and unerringly on Corax.

‘How long did you know I was here?’

‘I didn’t see through your illusions. I’ve seen this, through your eyes. Saw as you saw, as you were going to see. Just a matter of calculating angles. I know how you thought about leaving but couldn’t look away.’

That was true, but Corax wasn’t about to be put on the defensive when Curze was entirely in the wrong. On the other hand, any accusations would hardly be helpful when it could take hours to scratch the surface of all the myriad ways he was always in the wrong. ‘Morbid fascination.’

‘Are you going to keep being a voyeur or do you want to touch? You can borrow him.’

‘Stop trying to whore me out!’

Curze laughed like this was a good joke. ‘It won’t be the first time you’ve whored. If I choose, I’ll drive spikes through your hands and feet and lay you open and give the entire Legion a turn with you. Your reply to that, Sev?’

‘It would be inconvenient to reassert my authority after that, sire. Time-consuming.’ His tone suggested this would all be a minor annoyance at most.

‘Far be it from me to _inconvenience_ you.’

‘That will be the day, my lord.’

In their own way, they had the easy familiarity Corax would expect between a primarch and his first captain. It made him wonder disconcertingly how different any of them were, if this continued wanton pressing of skin to every exposed bit of skin was the natural extension of hero-worship without propriety or restraint.

‘Generous though your offer is, Konrad, I don’t actually want to fuck your first captain.’ There. That should be blunt enough for him to understand.

‘You think no one else does it?’ Curze asked, as if reading his mind. ‘Takes what is offered so very willingly? That Fulgrim’s hedonism stops at being gazed at adoringly? That Horus doesn’t like his sycophants on their knees? That Russ wouldn’t show off his manly prowess with anything that moves and anything that stay still long enough? That they don’t practice civilised pederasty in Ultramar? That Dorn wouldn’t say it doesn’t count as long as you feel guilty afterwards?’

‘Admittedly,’ Sevatar cut in, ‘who _wouldn’t_ do Sigismund?’

 _But Dorn’s a masochist. Sigismund would definitely—_ Nope, Corax definitely did not need to contribute to this conversation, particularly the part already getting into the Imperial Fists’ fascination with pain gloves and whips and chains. Curze always had seemed to have a particular fascination with Dorn.

‘I don’t.’

‘Then no wonder you’re so hard-up for it you need to get off vicariously. Unless that was always your kink.’ Curze laughed. ‘If you don’t want to get your hands dirty, I’ll do it for you.’ He left new bruises on Sevatar’s pale shoulder and he leaned into it with a sound deep in his throat that could have been pain or pleasure.

‘ _You_ can do whatever you want, if no one can stop you. Don’t blame it on me.’

‘Good answer. You _can_ do anything too. What _will_ you do?’

 _Anything_ was a broad range of physical possibility. Corax _wanted_ to win. What were the victory conditions here even? How could he obtain such things even if he defined them?

Corax observed. Corax paid attention to what was going on around him. To know Curze was to know the key to victory over him at his own game.

Things he knew: Curze was committed to seeing the worst in everyone, attributing all that was good to fear or weakness. He had seen this before it happened and still gone through with it anyway. The Night Lords saw sex in exactly the same lens they saw everything else--Oh, torturing and skinning our enemies to death is a-okay, but raping them too would be over the line? they would laugh.

Curze thought he had set up a win-win situation. He could either get Corax to back down and run away or to stain him with magnificent depravity.

‘I’d rather have you.’

‘Too bad, Sev. You’ll have to wait.’

‘Am I dismissed, sire? I’ll leave you to your fun.’

‘If you weren’t so eager to run away, I’d finish you off.’

‘I’ll live.’

‘I don’t care,’ Corax cut in to remind them he was still in the room, thank you very much.

Somehow, despite his best intentions, he ended up with a lapful of Astartes anyway. Curze and Sevatar played off each other well, making everything into a joke with each other and making every step along the way seem reasonable to distract from the fact the sum total is insane.

Sevatar was careful, watchful, like someone who still thought there could be a fight and had no intention of being caught unprepared. He played the game well, though. If Corax were less observant than he could mistake a hunting leopard for a cat in heat. He was hungry and aroused and enjoying the hormones like he would in a fight, ready and wanting and touching both of them as much as possible. It was sex totally divorced from emotions, though Corax could see clear as the day no one simulated here it was difference when Curze touched him. The natural confusion of a whore in love.

Not that Corax had suddenly decided he likes either of these people, even when Curze didn’t lean over to whisper conspiratorially, ‘You’ll wish later that you’d ripped his head off with your bare hands now, with all the crackling sounds of tearing bones and all that tongue you can’t see until you get the skull out of the way.’

He could ask more about that, but it would probably be equally incoherent and honestly the Night Lords doing something unforgivable in front of you was practically synonymous as being in the same system as them.

Sevatar was slight in his arms--all muscle but cast in a lesser scale to a primarch and so easily breakable.


	7. Bonobos/Sex Pollen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Emperor implanted the primarchs with [behavioural](http://xkcd.com/573/%20) [fail-safes](http://xkcd.com/531/%20) if they ever got in a real fight among themselves to stop them from killing each other. For whatever reason, He got these from bonobos. Conflict resolution/stress relief through sex results. Horus/Russ, Guilliman/Lorgar, Perturabo/Dorn, Angron/Lion, Horus/Corax [NC-17]

He had told himself he wouldn’t be jealous. He wasn’t a kid. He’d always known he’d have to share his father with nineteen brothers someday, and Father had told him the responsibility he had in exchange for all the time the two of them had had together. Horus had to be a role-model for his brothers and show them the ways of the Imperium and how to be a family.

Leman was from a feral deathworld in the middle of galactic nowhere. He thought so highly of himself because he’d never had anyone or anything worth comparing to. He would learn, but Horus would be there at his side to keep him from getting in too much trouble. Eventually. Once he’d learned his lesson.

‘No, we don’t do that here,’ he explained for the twentieth time.

[...]

Leman smelled good. Really good. Like...

Horus had no idea. He wanted to find out, though. Wanted to...

Whatever was wrong with him seemed to be wrong with his brother too. He hadn’t had a lot of time to observe him yet, but a minute ago his eyes had been pale instead of dark and the sheen of sweat on his skin was new. Horus agreed it was far too hot in here all of a sudden, though he’d previously thought he could probably walk on lava without trouble.

Leman was sniffing him. Like a dog. Horus wanted to be dismissive of his animalistic, savage behaviour, but at this moment he couldn’t remember why this was something to be avoided when it looked like such a good idea. Leman was so close he could feel the heat from his breath. This close the smell was overwhelming--sweat, rancid meat, animal musk, and some strange pheromone underneath he couldn’t quite catch.

Horus was on the edge, poised as if to leap into combat, but with no idea of the destination. What was happening? What should he do? Before he could figure out the answer to that on his own, Leman settled matters by swiping his tongue across Horus’s throat, sudden and wet.

A moment later they were kissing messily. Their noses bumped as often as not as they tried to find a better angle and Horus wasn’t entirely sure what to do with his tongue, but with the _pressure-heat-moisture_ he was less concerned with doing things perfectly and more with urgently doing them now. Leman ground their erections together and they both groaned.

Horus used his hands buried in Leman’s braids to push him away from his face. ‘Why are we doing this?’

‘We want to. Who cares?’ 

Not Horus. He didn’t understand why this was happening, but that wasn’t the same thing as caring. Caring was all taken up by Leman licking his collarbone. Maybe this was normal when you finally found a person who constituted your species for the first time in your life. He had heard a lot of discussions of sex, which he had dismissed because he’d never been interested. Maybe that was because humans smelled wrong, while Leman--oh fuck, how did a tongue against his shoulder feel so good?

Stopping was clearly a terrible idea. A good idea was tasting Leman’s skin and getting their clothes out of the way to get at more of it. Never had he been more grateful his brother’s new armour wasn’t finished yet and he wasn’t wearing his. Leman had the same idea and slightly more coordination while yanking Horus’s shirt over his head. He, on the other hand, was wearing an annoying number of layers that attached in strange ways, but after a moment he squirmed to help Horus strip him and pulled them back together.

If Horus had thought about what fucking Leman would be like--and he hadn’t, it hadn’t occurred to him until it had become a desperate need right now--he would had expected it to be like fighting. Each of them trying to win, biting and tearing and trying to pin the other down. Mostly that felt like a distraction at this point. The need to press skin against sweaty skin was too all-consuming to allow for any other desires.

They moved together, painfully hard and straining for contact. Leman wrapped a hand around them both and Horus’s hips jerked helplessly. He wanted to touch everywhere. He wanted to taste him. The hard, unyielding muscle against him felt too good, too unlike anything else and somehow just what he’d always wanted.

Leman was loud, moaning and growling and panting with everything they did, which was useful for letting Horus know what works best, not to mention the sparks of accomplishment the shot through his body with each sound.

*

If anyone knew, if anyone could see them now, what would they think? Probably that Guilliman was punishing Lorgar, but that was entirely wrong. It was an addiction, one neither of them could break no matter what they thought of each other the rest of the time.

Lorgar’s a mess, moaning and begging and pushing back into Guilliman’s thrusts. Guilliman’s not any more in control himself and he hates that, hates that he can’t even keep in his head whatever reasons he originally had for being angry and disappointed with his brother when the waves of desire are so strong.

He knows why they were programmed this way, wonders sometimes how bad it would be if they let the hatred build up until they killed each other if it was impossible to not hate each other. He knows he’s right and Lorgar’s wrong, but he doesn’t know how to make him not be wrong. He knows they’ll be at this for hours, sweaty and sticky and moving against each other in the dark, until they’re both too tired to do anything but hold each other, flesh against flesh. He knows this weakness is what keeps them together, that no matter how much they don’t _like_ each other they have this. He remembers the feelings of affection afterwards, of protectiveness and concern, after tiring out every negative emotion he has and knows he’ll feel it again, getting more and more addicted to the natural opiates being thrown into their systems to encourage this. He knows they’ll whisper against each other’s skin for hours after that, trying to understand each other, wanting to, and to persuade each other to their own way of thinking.

Guilliman knows all these things, but he can’t think. He’s not used to having the vast cloud of his attention concentrated to a single point, but all he can focus on is how good Lorgar feels clenching around him, the salty taste of Lorgar’s come still on his tongue.

He sucks at his skin, tasting the unique blend of pheromones they each give off when they’re angry that so affect each other. He shouldn’t, it’s only making it worse, but he can’t help himself. Blind need drives him and he can’t think of a single reason to stop. He traces the shapes of Lorgar’s tattoos with his tongue; the words mean nothing to him, but the metals used in the tattooing are bitter with traces of heavy elements.

Lorgar keens into the sheets, and it sends Guilliman over the edge. Every muscle in his body clenches with the intensity of his orgasm and he lies dazed and panting for a long time afterwards, face pressed into Lorgar’s sweaty back.

He feels so good this can’t possibly be right. But good isn’t inherently wrong, particularly when it has a purpose. He knows better.

Eventually Lorgar’s shoulders tense and he rolls around for another kiss. It’s soft at first. They’ve worn off the worst of the initial energy and aggression, but the remnants in their blood will keep the desire lurking at the edge of their vision much longer. The depths of the emotions they started off with were not ones that could be distracted by a quickie.

Lorgar presses against his stomach, hard again. Not breaking the kiss, Guilliman pulls him over him and wraps his legs around his hips. He can hear a helpless needy mewl of encouragement and it came from his own throat. He wants, he wants, he wants, and there’s nothing else.

*

It’s a cheat: not having to admit he wants it, not having to admit he likes it; it’s just something no one can control, right? Not Dorn’s fault. Not because he wakes up hard and aching after dreaming about being held down and fucked even without the momentary excuse of someone else’s hormones in his system.

Hating himself too vividly makes his brothers want to jump him, and the shame he feels because that’s exactly what he wants and how much he hates their pity turns it all into a vicious cycle.

It was easiest with Perturabo, because he hated Dorn back, and Dorn could lose himself in the hormonal mindlessness too when he got too close. Perturabo didn’t try to be careful, didn’t try to not take advantage or not take things too far. An unfortunate side effect of how their hormones worked when one of their brothers was angry and the other wasn’t was the calmer of them wanting to touch but also trying to be nice and consensual about it. Easier when they both had their blood up and were equally helpless when heat turned to passion.

He wasn’t sure if that quite made sense, but it was easier to think than admitting how he liked it. How he liked it when Perturabo pushed him down and did _filthy_ things to him and chuckled in his ear because he knew Dorn wanted it that way. How he liked to be hurt and used even when he burned with shame at his own desires.

Perturabo’s control was amazing. Being able to form whole sentences when in this state was an effort. Being able to tease and draw it out, even once they’d taken the initial edge off, was something else.

He needed Perturabo. Needed skin against his and to taste him with the intensity people talked about needing air. Even centimetre between them was a strain and Perturabo’s pupils were so wide he had to be feeling the same.

*

It was kind of funny that just being around him made these supposed brothers of his made them more like him. It wasn’t even breaking everything he touched; they were supposed to be that way. That bastard hadn’t given them a choice; just like the slaves in the arenas, they’d just been programmed to turn off all ability to think when...

The Nails bit as they always did when he tried to string more than one thought together about his so-called father, which just made the immediate problem worse.

It was kind of funny, and as far as Angron was concerned that was the best way to deal with anything he didn’t want to think about too hard. Just standing too close to him made them want to jump him all the time, and he could roll with that for the sake of a good joke at someone else’s expense.

Lion was hanging onto him desperately, panting and pressing against him. Pansy prettyboy, pale and cold and too frigid to notice or care that he was pretty much a jackass to everyone. At least Angron did it on purpose. Lion had been saying things that pissed him off, but even he could be distracted from being enraged when something that funny was happening.

He still hit Lion into the bulkhead hard enough to dent it, of course. The Nails weren’t too discerning about types of violence, and random erections were a pretty common side effect of all the screwing with his hormones. The other primarch certainly wasn’t being picky either as long as he could get his mouth on him and rub their hips together.

Angron chuckled low in his throat. ‘You sure want to be fucked.’

‘Only because _you_ have no discipline in the first place. If you would--’ He cut himself off with a gasp as Angron slammed against the wall again and moved against him forcefully.

‘I didn’t say I wasn’t going to give it to you.’

He could tell Lion wasn’t that upset by his scent, or Angron would be as affected as he was. No more than mildly annoyed. He wouldn’t be able to hold onto much else, though if he resisted, Lion’s increased frustration would start hitting Angron back. Angron had tried holding back before, more out of curiosity than because he expected to be able to control his own destiny, and it only got worse until it set off the Nails too and he collapsed bleeding from everywhere. Eh, at least coming down off it was better than coming down from being lost to the Nails, if Lion did get his knickers in a twist enough to set his instincts off in turn. The crash from this was supposed to feel good, to feel like falling in love, even if it was just hormones with no substance.

Angron picked Lion up entirely, which made him squeak indignantly but he apparently didn’t deem it worth pausing in sucking at Angron’s neck to complain. Angron groped his ass with one hand and the wordless pleading sounds he made in response definitely weren’t complaints.

Dealing with the Lion was like dealing with a very haughty cat that constantly got into stupid situations then pretended they had never happened. And at the moment like a kitten in her first heat, annoyed this was happening to him and inexperienced enough to be confused and desperate with want.

He probably didn’t even notice he was reinforcing that image by rolling onto his hands and knees and presenting his ass when Angron dumped him on his bed. Angron couldn’t help but stare for a moment and laugh at how he radiated embarrassment as clearly as desire.

‘Just get it over with.’

Despite his cold and controlled words through grit teeth, Lion cried out when Angron shoved fingers inside him. He tried to twist away and fight back out of habit, but he wasn’t trying very hard. Angron pinned him down anyway because he liked the squirming as he opened him up, and he wasn’t sure if he liked it more or less as Lion’s cries turned to moans and he struggles to pressing back into the violation of his body.

He looked delicate next to Angron, but he wasn’t about to break just from a little rough handling. Angron couldn’t have been gentle if he’d wanted to, and he saw no reason he’d want to. He was real pretty too, and that was just an added bonus.

The sheets muffled Lion’s shout as Angron took him from behind. He slammed into his body hard again and again. Lion squirmed and arched under him, growling and clawing at the bed as he adjusted to the cock inside him and started pushing back into Angron’s violent thrusts.

*

‘What were we fighting about again?’

Corax almost snapped back _Your memory only fails you when you when someone else has a good point, doesn’t it?_ at Horus, but it occurred to him he wasn’t sure either. The memories were there, but accessing them wasn’t exactly working. He could try, but in doing so he kept getting swamped by a flood of unfamiliar hormones and other recent memories of Horus’s cock rubbing against his prostate as he fucked him, and he was getting hard again, wasn’t he?

He’d thought he’d vaguely understood why people had hate-sex, but he’d never felt that way himself. Now he thought he’d been mostly wrong. He couldn’t even manage to stay angry properly, which had to be some kind of strange hormonal thing. Maybe this was more like make-up sex. He’d always thought that idea was stupid too, glossing over underlying problems with endorphins, but from his current situation it seemed like you didn’t do it because it ever seemed like a good idea so much as because you couldn’t help it.

He was far too aware Horus’s eyes were still dark and his breathing a little fast and he was shivering ever so slightly. Corax hadn’t noticed it at first, not until they’d started fighting, but now he couldn’t think of anything else except how good Horus smelled and how much he wanted to lick that illusive taste from his skin.


	8. Paradise Regained - Dark Angels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cypher/OFC, Luther/Lion [NC-17]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have written variations of this same "Luther and Lion reunited in post M42 era" fic so many times, over and over. It is my thing.

‘Cypher? You I see often out there, but you’re not a familiar hallucination here. A nice trick, Interrogator-Chaplain.’ He laughed.

‘I do not have time for you, your madness, or your paranoia. I will not be stopped from winning.’ His phase-knife sliced through the adamantium chains holding Luther in place and he grabbed enough of the shorn edges to lift him up by them, throw him over his back, and affix them to his breastplate well enough to counterbalance. ‘Hold on,’ he instructed, which to his lack of surprise Luther didn’t do in the least.

He’d known Luther’s fate for millennia. He’d kept tabs on his Legion, torturing it out of those of rank enough to know who thought they had it in them to hunt of the Fallen. A weakness, yet what kept him going, knowing his friends were waiting for him beneath the surface of once-Caliban, knowing that he must complete the tasks that were his before he could return to them, return for them.

His blood still hummed with it, what he had done. It hadn’t been long yet. Time, of course, was fluid. It hadn’t happened here yet, or the shockwave hadn’t reached it. In other places it had already happened, maybe to the beginning of time itself. The more rational part of him was surprised that there was an after, but most of him had been fantasising about this part for so long that his plans were so well-ingrained as to be mechanical.

Step by step, he’d formulated actions and contingencies over and over as if he were an Ultramarine.

‘You couldn’t even manage the sword. It’s the sword that matters, not the guns. Of course, you couldn’t fake _that_ well enough to fool me. I _know_.’

‘I still have the sheath, you idiot, and everyone knows how much power that has.’

It was a shock to see Luther like this. In his mind he was still his hero, then later his friend, then a dark knight of the Ruinous Powers perhaps. He’d seen so many things over the millennia he hadn’t thought anything could surprise him anymore, but his mind simply refused to register that this pitiful, broken creature muttering into the back of his armour was the man he’d once known. He simply acted on autopilot, no need to fit current distress, confusion, or other stimuli into his route.

He would put the sword to its purpose. He would be reunited with them. His beloved friends. Everything could be fixed, could go back to the way it had been before. He’d told himself that everyday for a very long time.

There were many things in the galaxy too broken to every be fixed. This couldn’t be that way. He had worked too hard for his dream for it to be impossible or for him to admit that. Hope fed Tzeentch as surely as despair Nurgle.

He’d needed Luther first, but it would only get harder from here. He’d hardly been subtle cutting a way to their most valuable prisoner. What would help him most was the Dark Angels’ own secrets. There were few enough of them who knew what he would be going for, that it even existed, or where it was located in their fortress-monastery. They would be entirely wrong about why, of course. They thought he had his prize and would be trying to leave now. Also, the Watchers in the Dark were on his side, not there’s, because they did know.

+Down,+ they indicated at the back of his mind, in the not-quite-words way of theirs.

 _Obviously,_ he thought in reply. _I didn’t think you left your greatest prize secretly in the highest tower._

+Secret and safe, but you need a way out too.+

 _Come on, hurry up, Morgan,_ they added, or maybe he thought to himself.

His boots pounded on the decks, feeling the tremor from one of traps he’d set on a timer to make it seem like he was everywhere. The lower levels were comforting, old Calibani architecture he had grown up with and crude shoring up to make ground-based foundations hold together during stellar acceleration. The remnants of old buildings were crumbled, making it easy to slip into the cracks, and he knew where they’d lead as easily as he could have navigated a stockade with messages as a novice.

‘We’re home now. That was a stupid dream scene-transition.’

‘The plants are all dead. That’s got to be symbolic of something,’ he suggested.

Leaving Luther to ponder the statement of fact caused by simple logistical reasons, Cypher searched for water. _Really, a fusion reactor outflow coolant system?_

He received no answer but hadn’t expected or needed one. The important thing was the water. Legend always spoke of going through a waterfall or crossing a stream or being lost in fog to enter the realm of the fairies. He knew how to step sideways in reality on purpose, though he knew those much more adept at it than he.

Because he couldn’t be here. He could not exist in this realm, and certainly not in this mortal place.

Lion el’Jonson on his ancient bier.

He had wondered what it would feel like to see his primarch once more. The urge to kneel was still there upon laying eyes on him after thirteen thousand years, but it was easy to brush off. (Of course that wasn’t the only urge he felt when he saw him, it had never been, but ignoring that was even easier because he’d always known he wasn’t the one and never would be and he accepted that. He was Lion’s chosen knight and chosen secret keeper.)

It was just a primal instinct. He was an old man and had seen and done many, many things and the awe was long gone compared to a deep understanding of how stupid everyone had been as children (and plenty of them still to this day).

The Lion was perfect, as perfect as he’d always been. His hair was long and unshorn, as was his beard. There was no sign of the wound that had killed him, though the mangled wreck of his armour had never been repaired and he didn’t wear it. He wasn’t in stasis like Guilliman or a rotting corpse. He looked asleep.

Honestly that made him harder to wake. There was no _reason_ things should be that way. But Cypher knew stories. And, well, he had a couple backup plans if his first try went wrong, including ‘steal now and figure out the details later.’

In the end it didn’t matter if he was lying to himself about the possibility of everything going back to the way it had been. Time couldn’t be turned back like that. The important thing was that Lion woke. That Luther was freed. That they could make their peace with each other. His friends. That was the future. The future was real. It was possible.

(He had killed... Born from the ashes had been...)

Luther had fallen to his knees and was muttering apologies to Lion in hysterical sobs, over and over, desperate and broken and barely comprehensible and totally without pride.

He dragged Luther up half by his shoulder and half by his hair. ‘Wake him up. You’re the only one who can do it.’

Luther just looked at him, glassy eyed, barely understanding him.

‘It has to be you. You’re the one he’s been waiting for. It was always the two of you hunting beasts in the forests, remember? Lion and Luther. They were fools to keep you apart all this time and wait. Wake him and ask his forgiveness properly.’

‘How?’

Cypher’s job, back in the oldest lost days of the Order, was keeping the lore and mysteries of his people, instructing the young and advising the old in history and legend, fable and parable. It was nostalgic to say, ‘What do you think you’re supposed to do with a sleeping princess? He is as Talia, crowned with sun and moon, stabbed with a knight’s sword rather than a maiden’s spindle.’

Luther nodded and stumbled towards the bier. Cypher doubted his conscious mind was processing most of the situation or its implications. It would be useful if no propriety or shame or second-guessing got in the way.

Of course Luther _wanted_ to kiss Lion. He had for the longest time. He was most certainly Lion’s true love in return. Cypher had kept their secrets too well back when he’d had the chance to change things, back before Luther had been Launcelet, or perhaps Medraut considering their final battle, and he, appropriately, had been Morgan le Fay to Lion’s Arturus. If Luther couldn’t remember a single reason he had once told himself to convince himself he shouldn’t, all the better.

‘Lion,’ Luther whispered, stroking his face and hair with the reverence due to the most holy of relics. ‘Please.’

He bent his head and laid his cracked lips to still and bloodless ones.

There were no fireworks, no great clash of cymbals or light from the heavens. The sleeper did not come to complete wakefulness with a gasp or a punch. But Lion’s lashes fluttered ever so slightly and his breathing changed. After a moment he pressed into the kiss, eyes still closed.

It was enough for Luther to melt against him and cling to his hair just to hold himself up, but for a primarch his slow, slight movements spoke of weakness and frailty that were far from being instantly shaken off.

‘Senda, get us out,’ he shouted across the vox.

‘On your left.’

There was still the problem that he had two men who needed to be all but carried and no other hands left over for a pistol when they’d wasted too much time and needed to make a fighting retreat. Almost made one wish for the gifts of Tzeentch.

‘Can you get to us?’

‘No!’

It had been unlikely. The fortress-monastery was too small for her to fly a ship inside its corridors and too solidly built for her to remove all the walls the might block her path.

‘Three second burst of covering fire inside in two.’

She clicked an acknowledgement and he tackled Luther and Lion behind the cover of a wall before Thunderhawk-grade weaponry opened up down the hallway leading to the nearest breach of cold vacuum, as the Watchers had indicated.

Cypher was already running again as she ceased fire, pulling his friends along past melted combat servitors and confused neophytes. He’d sealed his helmet, and Lion and Luther could stand the momentary void exposure as atmosphere whistled past, from primarch biology and a body wracked with the powers of Chaos respectively.

‘What’s happening?’ Lion asked again. ‘Are Horus’ forces attacking Caliban? What happened? Whose side are you on, Cypher?’

‘Shut up!’ he yelled over the external speakers, and surprisingly the Lion did. Or perhaps not surprisingly; watchful, evaluating, unable to imagine himself in real danger even after all that had happened. ‘The tactical situation has changed utterly while you were asleep and this is a rescue.’

Were these young Dark Angels a threat to their own primarch? No, probably not. More of them were dropping to their knees in shock than shooting. But primarch aura was not particularly effective out of line of sight. And they were not the people the Lion needed and they were not the ones who really needed him.

Senna swung around as they approached, just fast enough that he timed it right and they slammed into an interior wall in order to stop instead of making a dent in the outer plating. She reversed the thrusters before bothering with the routine to close the embarkation ramp and only Cypher’s grip on Luther kept him from being thrown back through the door. Lion’s hand had grabbed him too, maybe instinctively, maybe he’d had time to think and done it anyway.

‘Morgan, controls.’

With a curse, Cypher ran for the sectioned-off bridge of the small ship and lunged for the controls, allowing Senna to drop them. He threw them one way after another as randomly as possible to throw off anyone using manual targeting, then made it look like they were going around for another pass. Automatic systems would refuse to believe her ship existed.

‘Senda!’

‘Concentration,’ she growled shortly. She curled up in the pilot chair with her knees to her chin, breathing in a meditative conscious and controlled way, eyes closed.

Laser turbines scoured their hull. Something exploded, blinding his external vision except by instruments. Alarms screamed about missile locks. Eventually someone would figure out they wouldn’t be able to dodge everything if they opened up with one of their huge cannons with a beam-radius the size of their capital ship, however many of their own escort ships it took out. They only knew about one of their passengers after all.

Senna breathed, once, twice, slowly, then she reached out and pulled the controls down suddenly. There was a dreadful scrape, then another, like they were flying in a space too tight for them, then there was darkness without.

‘We should have kept Del,’ he commented.

‘I did try, but we were out of cake to bribe her with and she insisted on going to find Ahriman right then, even though I’m sure his distraction went fine. You saying we should have waited? Or it’s suddenly become physically possible to catch and hold her against her will, which would negate the entire purpose of having her along?’

‘She served well enough on Terra,’ he admitted begrudgingly, not wanting to say Senna was right. ‘Her abilities with the Webway are vastly superior to your dark paths.’

They weren’t friends. They were enemies. Yet, they were the kind of enemies that sometimes fought, sometimes fucked, and sometimes teamed up.

It was comfortable. They’d been this way for a long time, their whole fourteen thousand year acquaintance in fact. If anything, their actions in the recent past and their plans for the near future were uncomfortable because they had been and would be working together and it had been easy and companionable, their goals and values lining up for once. Maybe they were quadrant vacillating between black and red for all he knew.

Senna dropped them back into realspace and opened luminous blue eyes.

‘Where are we?’ With her so close he couldn’t feel a thing with the senses he had picked up over the millennia from Chaos exposure or the Watchers.

‘I have no idea. Hopefully not too far from anywhere, because I really don’t want to make a Navigator-less short-jump or even use the dark paths with beacons like that aboard even with all attention on Terra. On that note, go make sure your guests haven’t killed each other again while I look for a star chart.’

*

Lion el’Jonson was at a complete loss. His was the finest analytic tactical mind in the galaxy, but he simply lacked sufficient information.

He had been held captive by a Legion he didn’t recognise, in Salamander green but wearing some Dark Angel heraldry. (Cypher had said held captive, but he couldn’t be fully trusted.) Maybe they were the Legionnaires he’d left on Caliban, allied with the Warmaster now, some other faction than those who had fired on his ships earlier. Why was their armour of strange design, though? Uncovered Dark Age technology or some xeno alliance?

Where were they? They’d been on some kind of space station and it had been of Calibani construction, but it was not any of the ones his fleet had sighted when they’d approached his planet upon his return, he could cross-reference that instantly.

Despite himself, and despite what people thought about him, his emotions were getting the best of him. He couldn’t stop thinking about Luther. Luther who had betrayed him twice. Luther who, just a moment ago, had stabbed him through the primary heart in that moment Lion had hesitated. He wondered what Guilliman would say that he would be so weak. But it was Luther, and Luther was his...

He wanted to feel vengeful, to fall on Luther again and finish their duel. Instead there was only the confusion of a situation he didn’t understand in the least. Luther looked nothing like how he how remembered him, either when they’d been brothers or when he’d seen him last, empowered by the dark forces of Chaos. He was clearly in no shape to fight domestic livestock.

Neither was Lion for that matter; he felt like he’d just lost a fight with Curze that left his Apothecaries at a loss for how he was still alive. No time had passed for him, but it was clear many things had happened to Luther and Cypher since, and he had to know if he was ever going to get caught up with the situation. His hair was too long. He wasn’t accustomed to needing to shave. Years. How many? Things were moving too fast, had been since his father had returned to Terra. What had he missed? Had everyone had to struggle on without him like the half-broken Iron Fists or Vulkan’s very confused Salamanders?

Luther hadn’t stopped leaning against him and Lion was too aware of everywhere they touched. He shouldn’t be so distracted. He remembered Luther kissing him as he woke so sharply and he had always wanted... but it had to have been a dream of his fevered still-sleeping mind. Luther looked at him like... he didn’t know. He needed Luther to explain these things to him, he never understood.

It was something like the look Luther had given him in the moment he’d given the order to send him away. He’d seen that look more often since. It was the expression of an Isstvan veteran. Someone unable to deal with this new galaxy where brother fought brother. But Lion had been the one betrayed. That didn’t make sense.

Luther was muttering softly, his cadence speaking of madness and incoherence even before he caught the words, in a mixture of the old dialect of Caliban, Imperial Gothic, and some other Gothic-derivative dialect he hadn’t heard before. His name was repeated over and over like a mantra, in between disjointed phrases, most commonly ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘Forgive me.’

‘Luther?’ he asked. _What am I supposed to do?_ Who was he supposed to ask if not his right hand? Corswain would be sighing at him.

Cypher stuck his head in from the bridge, helmet off again but hood still covering most of his familiar face. He had some new scars. ‘Jonson, you ass, if you’re a bitch to Luther, I’ll punch your pretty face in. You have no idea what he’s been through for you.’ Then he went back, echoes of a heated conversation with an unknown woman in the same unfamiliar dialect Luther had been using following, clearly about astronavigation from the words he did recognise.

That was... uninformative, but did indicate Cypher was siding with Luther in whatever was going on. But even he could tell the threat was companionable, the irreverent kind he was more used to getting from Guilliman or a Wolf than an enemy or a subordinate. They were also no longer under fire, which presumed they had made a blind Warp jump, or the woman was a Navigator. The flicker at the edge of his consciousness had been off for a Warp entry, though he was no Magnus.

But back to Luther. What should he say? What should he do? Could he forgive? He wasn’t known for it, didn’t know how some people could trust again and again like gullible fools. He hadn’t been able to do it. He hadn’t been able to kill Luther, like how his father had been unable to kill Horus and had been struck down for his human weakness--no, that had been a dream. How could he trust if when he didn’t even know what had turned Luther against him in the first place? What could he say that wouldn’t give away how desperately he needed him at his side, let alone the unnatural burning lusts he felt for him that he felt even now?

‘Luther. What happened to you? Get a hold of yourself man.’ He took Luther’s face between his hands and forced their gazes to meet. The skin under his palms was wet with tears. It seemed foolish to ask why he was asking his forgiveness when Lion still remembered their fight. Yet some part of him remembered Luther catching him as he fell, something in his face breaking, words--like these, but what had been a dream and what hadn’t? The memories from then blurred together darkly.

Luther kept looking at him. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what to do. Guilliman had said to him when he had been able to operate the Pharos empathic connection when Lion could not, _I am more open with my needs and my hopes. I do not sequester them as you do, brother. The field could not read you. In that theoretical there is perhaps a practical that we both might heed._

A word bubbled up inside his throat, a word he had been holding back since Sarosh. ‘Why? Why, brother?’

‘Because I was a fool. I saw my dream of changing Caliban carried out by your strength and thought your destiny had overshadowed mine. I thought you would not want me anymore now that this new galaxy had found you. You were the lord of a Legion and I was no longer your father or your brother but a subordinate to be exiled like a disobedient child sent to bed without supper. You didn’t want me or need me, and the things I did...’

‘Never. I never stopped needing you. We were arrogant and stiff-necked both.’ Each word became easier as he spoke.

‘Why? Why did you send me away? Why did you never come home?’

‘I was afraid,’ the Lion admitted finally. ‘I didn’t understand what had happened. You were the only one I could have turned to, and you had betrayed me. I was angry at first, but that’s not why. I tried not to think about it. I tried to forget you and what had happened and think only of the Crusade and the Heresy.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Luther repeated again, again and again. ‘I wanted to hear it from you, but I knew. I’ve been turning it over in my mind all this time, how blind I was. I was a fool for resenting you. I let my jealousy warp everything about you, let myself believe the whispers that weren’t true. I should never have hurt you. I should never have left you alone. I know how you are. As broken as you are beautiful,’ he said, speaking with the ease of someone not accustomed to differentiating what he said out loud from what was going through his mind. ‘I’ve been yours since the first moment I laid eyes upon you in the forest. I never meant to leave your side.’

‘I accept your oath. I swear to you in turn I will never send you from my sight.’ He thought about other words he could say. Too sentimental. Too vague. Maybe a lie. His true thoughts were too complicated and hidden even from him to put into words, even if he were inclined to admit more than he had already out loud. Should he say them anyway? It was the sort of meaningless social ritual others liked to hear. ‘I forgive you.’

Luther whimpered and buried his face in his neck.

‘Was that right? Was that what I was supposed to say? What are we supposed to do now?’ he asked. It was his Luther, again, he could ask such things, couldn’t he?

‘I have no idea,’ his brother answered, and kissed his cheeks, his lips, embraced his warmly. Everything was too warm and he simply basked in it, exhausted like he had been fighting for days from a simple conversation and still so weak it was an effort to lift his arms to embrace Luther back. It felt like another dream more than anything, not quite real or ever to be spoken of again or a part of the waking world.

********

_much later in the story_

Luther reached out and touched his face. Lion shuddered but kept his eyes open as Luther slowly leaned up to kiss him.

It was careful and gentle as Luther tried not to scare him off like soothing a wild animal. He was reminded of the day they’d first met deep in the forest. It was like a first kiss, though it wasn’t. They’d already had a magical true love’s first kiss, or so the bards would term it. The things he had done in that first day when he was mad, kissing and touching and clinging, seemed as distant as the rest of his insanity to him and like more dreams for Lion.

Lion gripped his upper arms tightly, bruisingly, but he didn’t mind anything when he could have him looking at him like that. Lion was hardly breathing hard, but for him his expression was one of pure, undisguised, helpless desire.

Lion leaned down to kiss him again, concentrating hard like he always had the first time he was shown a new sword technique before mastering it. How many times had he jealously worried about Lion doing this with one of his new brothers, the ones who could be his equals, the ones who could be legends in their own rights, the ones he couldn’t and wouldn’t cast away? He could feel the calculation in the movements of his lips and smiled in response. One of his hands rested on Lion’s neck and stroked his hair, strands too soft and fine. His other traced his spine to the small of his back and Lion arched his back at the touch, obviously bewildered by his body’s reactions.

‘What do we do? Show me.’

Luther made a half-choked sound and buried his face in Lion’s neck. ‘You have no idea what you do to me.’ How many shameful fantasies had he had as Lion’s mentor long ago of showing the boy how to take pleasure from another and give it in return?

‘Luther?’

‘Aye, I’ll show you.’ He wrapped his arms around Lion’s chest and rested his hands on his sides. ‘You just need to concentrate on feeling. I know that mind of yours doesn’t turn off, but let me give you the whole picture. Tell me if you don’t like something.’

It wasn’t that Luther had done this with a man himself, their cultural prejudices were the same, but he was experienced enough with women and Cypher and Senna had both taken him aside to explain about the subject, though how she knew so much he wasn’t sure. There was the old barracks gossip too, naturally, but that was framed in shame and sin and the excitement of about saying things that were as crude as they were taboo.

He kissed Lion again, letting one hand run down the ripples of muscles of his chest to the front of his trousers, stroking him through the fabric. Lion gasped into his mouth.

‘That’s... that feels surprisingly different.’

‘Do you like it?’

‘Yes,’ he replied with every ounce seriousness.

He wanted everything right now, wanted Lion screaming his pleasure and coming under him, overwhelmed by the unfamiliarity and intensity of what was happening to him. He forced himself to go slowly anyway. Lion wasn’t delicate, he wasn’t holding back his strength and didn’t need to, but he wanted to make love to him, not toss him in a haystack and feel him up.

They got each other’s clothes off in between desperate, hungry kisses, getting in each other’s way and elbowing each other awkwardly as if they didn’t undress everyday. They’d seen each other naked before, but he’d been trying not to appreciate the inhuman solidity and contours of Lion’s muscles, his sheer beauty and the perfection of his form. He also towered over him, which made kissing awkward and made Luther feel weak and fragile. He once might have resented that, but it seemed so petty after all he’d been through and all his jealousy had brought about for both of them. He didn’t mind one bit if he couldn’t breathe pinned under Lion, he just wanted him.

Yet when they finally fell into the nest of pillows and blankets on the floor, their half-grinding half-wrestling ended with Lion pulling Luther over to straddle him. He looked down at him, those beautiful green eyes dark with passion, hips twitching with want. ‘Do you want me to...’

‘Yes. Please, Luther, fuck me.’ For him he sounded almost tentative and the way he spread his legs unpractised and hopeful.

He groaned and leaned up to kiss Lion messily, running a hand over his cheek and tracing his lips. ‘Lick.’

‘Why?’ Lion still gave his fingers a slight swipe with the tip of his tongue before it disappeared back in his mouth.

He should have just wet his fingers himself, he thought. But then Lion’s sheer obviousness extended to everything, so he’d have to explain eventually. ‘It’ll be better with lubricant. I want this to feel good. I’m going to get you ready first; you’re not a woman.’

‘No.’ Luther wondered how much Lion even knew about female anatomy and strongly suspected it was what could be found in books, and educational manuals at that.

‘Women are made to do this naturally, but I’m going to have to get you ready with my hands first, alright?’

Whatever he was thinking, Lion took his fingers in his mouth and sucked on them experimentally. His eyes widened fractionally and his hips bucked under Luther’s other hand, like he hadn’t expected that would send a spark of pleasure through him and it had, and Luther really didn’t need to be thinking about Lion moaning around his cock the way he was diligently coating his fingers with saliva.

They kissed again as Luther reached down between them and Lion bit his shoulder as he pressed fingers inside. Luther shuddered at the pain/pleasure, trying to keep every inch of their bodies flush against each other as he kept moving his hands.

It seemed pointless to tell him to relax when they were both straining with desire suppressed for far, far too long. Instead he got Lion to cry out as he found the right spot inside him and stroked there.

‘I want you.’

‘Alright.’ He’d done what he could. Maybe later they could do this again with self-control and proper lube and slow preparation, but for now this was all the delay either of them could stand.

When he pressed inside, it was all he could do not to come. Lion was strength and heat and wild beauty spread out beneath him. Lion groaned in slight discomfort and deep satisfaction and wrapped his arms around his back tightly. Luther thrust into him hard and Lion bucked up to meet his rhythm, all quick gasping breaths and little shudders.

It was... not like a fight. Not against each other. Moving together, dancing in time with each other’s movements against a common foe perhaps.

‘Luther, that’s...’ Whatever he was going to say he never managed because Luther found the exact angle he’d been looking for.

He smirked back and got Lion to gasp as he stroked his cock again in time with his thrusts. Lion squirmed against him, his hair mused and eyes dark and breathing fast, and all his fantasies had never prepared him for cold, calm Lion coming apart. He wanted to close his eyes because it was all too much, but he couldn’t look away.

Lion’s inexperience kept him from lasting long, and Luther didn’t mind one bit when he had him gripping his shoulders and clenching around him like that. He pressed his face against warm skin--fuck, he was still trembling with the force of his climax--and Luther couldn’t possibly have stopped himself from coming. For minutes afterwards he couldn’t even remember how to breathe with Lion’s scent and the smell of their spent passion in his nose.

‘Did you like that?’

Lion nodded, chin brushing his head. ‘It was pleasurable. It was... better than I’d imagined.’

‘You’ve spent a lot of time imagining?’ he teased, and Lion looked away and blushed. He couldn’t help but chuckled and snuggle closer at that. Lion was so warm and his muscle so unyielding. He wasn’t showing facial expression, but Luther could guess he was offended, so he added, ‘Me too.’

There were so many things he wanted to say. _You’re beautiful. You’re magnificent. I want to touch you all the time. I want to bask in your light._ Lion had always been inclined to keep his own counsel, watchful and opaque, and Luther wondered how much he’d made that worse, telling him it was proper and manly to let logic rule emotion and by letting himself grow paranoid at Lion’s secrets. He should have said those things long ago and made everything right the first time around.

‘I love you.’

‘Really?’

He had to laugh at Lion’s seriousness and suspicion. ‘Really. I love you so much. I loved you even when I hated you. I’ll love you even if you hate me. I’ll love you until the stars burn out.’

‘We won’t still be alive then.’

‘Not like that.’

‘I don’t understand.’

He hugged Lion tighter reassuringly. ‘As long as I’m alive, then. As long as any remnant of me remains in the universe. I’ll still love you.’

Lion nodded at that. ‘I never stopped thinking of you when we were apart. I don’t think it would have helped if you’d been dead.’


	9. The Emperor perving on Horus/Sanguinius

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Horus/Sanguinius, mention of Emperor/Amon Tauromachian and discussed Emperor/Horus [NC-17]

_Sanguinius’ wings fanned around them, stretching out as far as they went in convulsive flaps. He was usually more subdued, as if not drawing attention to his mutation would keep anyone from noticing. He couldn’t help himself, not with Horus’ hot, hungry gaze on him as he lowered himself down on him._

The Emperor in turn congratulated himself, not in the least bit surprised how fast their relationship was progressing though Sanguinius had been found only recently. More than the chemistry of their lust, which was definitely present, they would be good for each other in terms of complementary personalities, and having Horus mentor Sanguinius had been an entirely correct decision.

_Horus leaned up to kiss him and Sanguinius closed the gap eagerly, gasping against his brother’s mouth at the shock of movement rippling through his entire body. He’s never done this before, never imagined it would feel so good to be filled, never thought he could want someone this much._

Sanguinius at least would be mortified anyone knew what they were doing. Horus was experienced and confidence enough to be less embarrassed by expressing his sexuality. He at least knew better intellectually, but the Emperor knew perfectly well that what a growing adolescent needed was the illusion of privacy. There were few people other than Malcador who had the age and experience to find passion so... banal. With enough intimacy with human intimacy, it became as familiar in all its heights and depths and as natural and unconscious as breathing to skim over it in nearly every mind within his attention. His sons certainly were doing nothing they should be ashamed of.

_Their kiss started clumsy, but as it grew more heated any messiness mattered less. Only that their lips and tongues met again and again, their muffled groans, the sharp burn of Sanguinius’ fangs drawing blood._

There were inconveniences in this role he needed to play now, being this Emperor of Mankind. He’d been a public figure many times before, but it had been millennia since he’d had so many plans being carried out all at once after the quiet preparations in his laboratories under the Himalazias while the Storms raged.

It was a time of spilling blood now. Fatherhood was difficult enough to fit into his designs when he needed tools for war. He couldn’t afford to fall in love or raise a family like he had many times before. Couldn’t afford to play at normality for perspective or any such thing. Couldn’t afford human emotions of doubt or hesitation when everything was on the knife’s edge. Now was a time for decisive action with too many distractions already.

_Sanguinius’ pleasure was pure and uncomplicated. Horus’ power and confidence were magnetic. He threw his head back, concentrating on nothing but friction and the shift of muscle as he rode him._

That was why he’d never taken Horus to bed, even when Horus had been confused and frustrated by the changes in his body and the increased distance between himself and the rest of humanity. The man who would become the Emperor had long before become used to the idea he would never have a true peer, but he’d also long since gotten used to the idea of taking lovers among these candle-flicker mortals anyway. Cultivating these primarchs was delicate enough as it was; that would have pushed the balance in ways less conducive for their slim chance of victory. Better to have a son.

_Horus’ hands gripped his shoulders bruisingly hard. Sanguinius’ didn’t understand half of what he saw in his eyes, felt in his touch, but he exalted it anyway, the want and adoration and possessiveness and wonder._

‘My Emperor?’ Amon Tauromachian asked, not because he’d noticed his lord’s distraction, as if he would be concentrating on only a single thing (or a hundred) at once, but because he had a report to make.

‘Speak,’ he ordered, even though he already knew what was in his Custodes’ mind. Conducting business in the slow-time of oral communication was far too unwieldy to get a fraction of what was needed done, but it was useful in building retort with the individuals who were most useful to him, who he needed to delegate many of the galaxy’s unending concerns to, while he turned his mind to a thousand other impersonal tasks.

‘Captain Abaddon inquires after the location of his primarch. They were supposed to discuss the deployments for the western approach an hour ago. Even Captain Sejanus was expressing concern.’ Amon didn’t like Abaddon, but he, like everyone else, could deny the personable Sejanus nothing.

_Sanguinius cried out sharply as Horus stroked one of his wings, running his broad, scarred fingers through the smooth pinions. ‘Ahhh, Lupercal, that’s--’_

_‘I want to touch you everywhere.’_

‘Reassure them their primarch has only been detained and make sure Sanguinius’ chambers are undisturbed, especially by Horus’ sons.’

Amon’s eyes widened as he worked through that. Really, everyone in the whole Palace on Terra must have come across Fulgrim and Ferrus at some point. ‘Yes, my lord. Is there anything else you wish of me?’

_Horus kneaded his hands firmly into the muscles of his back, eventually working lower to squeeze at his ass and Sanguinius groaned and squirmed, making his brother moan as he clenched around him._

There was a spark of impulse in his unconscious indicating Amon wanted to do more than guard his body, but Amon hadn’t noticed just now, yet. There was something likeable about that, the innocence of desire without the flush of shame that would follow when he noticed and felt he was dishonouring his lord with his thoughts.

Such feelings were not entirely without reciprocation. Sexual desire could be turned off, but like eating or sleeping it was useful if unnecessary. Even he needed to cycle between worldly concerns and immaterial ones to neglect neither the wars that needed to be fought in mud and blood and those being fought over the future of the human race.

Sanguinius’ ecstasy was a warm and inviting cloud. The sense of it was both powerful and familiar from how much of his soul had gone into the crafting of his sons, needing some reflection of his strength and abilities without the time to gamble on grooming protégés through thousands of years worth of first-hand experience to earn power instead of being given it.


	10. Sister Anya

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the crypto-Jew, first two scenes. gen [PG]

‘No, I absolutely forbid it.’

‘My mind’s made up and you won’t stop me.’

If anyone had been listening in to the office, they would have been shocked. A progena did not talk back to her drill-abbot.

‘You’ll be found out and then where will we be?’

‘I’ll never hint at it--if you let me go.’

‘Don’t you dare threaten that, girl, even in jest.’ Solomon Garza hit his desk with both hands, then began pacing again, glaring at his charge. She was still seated, but looked as angry as he was. ‘You know better. What’s at stake is the lives of every person in this schola. You won’t be hailed as a hero, you’ll be purged along us. You’re a heretic, I’m a heretic, and our people have been heretics since the Emperor still walked.’

‘Forgive me, Uncle. I would never cast suspicion of heresy upon us. I never will.’

‘You think it will be easy? Have these last few years since you were told the secret been easy? It will only get harder. In Adepta Sororitas? One slip is all it will take.’

‘Everywhere is dangerous. What did you think I would do anyway? Become some Administratum drone? I have the best combat scores in the whole schola and you know it.’

‘Then why not the Imperial Guard, if you must be called to arms? There are our people there.’

‘I don’t want to command, let alone a bunch of half-trained Guard conscripts. I just want to fight.’

‘You have no idea what you’re talking about or what the Guard’s like. Beyond that, Battle Sisters aren’t the same as them but elite; they’re the lackeys of the Ecclesiarchy and Ordo Hereticus. Think about what that means.’

‘We hate the Ruinous Powers as much as anyone. More even, because it is Chaos that means humanity must be united, so we must remain hidden and endure the persecution of the Emperor-cult without protest,’ she quoted back.

‘You think you’re going to choose your heretics? That our people won’t be among them? Will you purge your own little brothers someday?’

‘And you fought only xenos in the Guard? This must be done so the people may endure. Then when we do have our own in positions of power, they can protect the rest of us. Because of you and our other cousins in the Administratum, my brothers and I are progena, not starving in the underhive since Mama and Papa died. Someday I could be useful.’

‘Someday you will get caught. Adepta Sororita is at least as much about piety as martial prowess. You were too old when you were brought here to internalise the proper responses already.’

‘I can turn any conversation into one about piety. It is the most treasured gift I have been granted by the most benevolent Emperor.’

‘Spend a bit less time on hate and more on fear. That sort of irreverence will not pass for sincerity. Cleverness is dangerous, not helpful.’

‘Sorry, sir.’ She looked down and her voice was low. ‘I’m not asking you to sing of my piety, only to approve and send on what the proctors have said. I’m already under consideration by the Order of the Bloody Rose. Please, Uncle--’

‘Don’t call me that. You are no longer my niece.’ She flinched but then looked him steadily in the eye. ‘You’re disowned, excommunicated. Your mother would be ashamed.’ Relenting slightly, he explained, ‘This is for your own good. You are not Miryam Garza anymore and you never will be again and you must forget you ever were. You must be Anya Dores and no one else, ever.’

*

Novice Anya was cultivating a reputation for stoicism by holding perfectly still as she knelt on the cold, hard stone. She could hear her fellow novitiates shifting restlessly on occasion, but she tried to slow her breathing, never mind her movement.

The best bit was that it made her body go numb faster. Sure it would be painful as soon as her novitiate group was called to leave the chapel, but at least until then she could only feel a distant tingling. Her fellows didn’t seem to have figured that out, though even if they had, half of them had gotten it into their heads that pain was an ends to be sought in and of itself.

Anya mentally snorted behind her shield of mute stoicism. Feeling righteous by feeling a fraction of the Emperor’s pain was mere vanity. It wasn’t like they could take any of it away from Him and it would only weaken them from their physical best. As for their spiritual best, as if they lacked for morale.

What she was was bored. What did other people think about when they wasted all their time sitting with their eyes fixed on votive statuary and idols?

Pray, presumably. Since she quickly grew frustrated reliving her performance in the combat chapel that day when she could not move her body along with her thoughts, she had to give up on the practical. At least she could say her own prayers in the silence, those her mother had taught her. They included phrases such as ‘You shall not make for yourself a sculpted image, or any likeness of what is in the heavens above. You shall not bow down to them or serve them.’

 _Maybe we’ll be allowed to run around the convent grounds after this, then pick vegetables._ She thought longingly for a moment of live-fire practice, but didn’t want to get her hopes up. At least she enjoyed vegetables well enough; it was hard to explain when other girls made faces or tried not to that she found it the relaxing, mechanical kind of tedious.

‘Girls.’ Sister Superior Dulcina’s voice range out across the chapel as sharply as her single clap. ‘Two laps of the convent, then assemble in the gardens. Not you, Anya. Sister Tatyana has sent for you.’

‘Busted,’ Yuliya whispered. ‘The collection.’

Anya tried to calm her racing heart. All rumour was up about some servants skimming off the top of the collection boxes meant for charity. No one from the convent proper had been implicated as such, but the lectures lately had been leaning towards the idea that young Novice Virginia should not have been the first to turn them in and that not denouncing improper behaviour made you as guilty as if you had done it yourself. It was only a minor matter, she told herself, and she’d just take any punishment she was given without saying much. She had known and had merely not wanted to draw attention to herself.

Now she did start to pray. _Ave Imperator, defende nos in praelio. Contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium._ She wasn’t out in the world with witches and Inquisitors yet, but it needed to be reflex to bury moments of paranoia under High Gothic chanting.

‘Dullard,’ Yuliya hissed at her habitual complete lack of visible reaction as she filed past. Anya didn’t even look at her besides tracking movement out of the corner of her eye in case she tried for a pinch, but she didn’t under the eyes of the training-sister.

‘Novice, don’t keep Sister Tatyana waiting.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ Anya rose with a stumble but nothing more as she grit her teeth and fought for her balance. Her first few steps were uneven as she couldn’t feel her feet beyond pins, needles, and cramps, but she shook it off in a few more and hopping into a light jog.

Sister Tatyana was a retired Celestian who oversaw all of the novices’ training rather than one of their usual instructors. Her offices were modest, befitting her vows of poverty, decorated only by an elaborate icon of the Emperor, but in a prime spot near the chapel compared to the space given over to the younger sisters usually away from the convent on missions.

The older woman’s face wasn’t easy to read with the deep, pink scar across her dark skin from left temple to the right-hand curve of her jaw, severing muscle and taking out a large chunk of her nose, but she didn’t seem particularly stern at the moment. Anya preferred not to look at her face because she didn’t want to look like she was staring at her scar but wasn’t sure how not to.

‘You’re not in trouble, Anya.’ The Celestian raised an eyebrow, ‘Unless you’ve done something you think you should be in trouble for.’

‘No, ma’am. Nothing in particular that can’t wait until confessional,’ she backtracked quickly.

‘You’re doing very well in your xeno-linguistics classes. Sister Natalya has offered to sponsor you if you wish to put in for transfer to an Ordo Dialogous.’

Anya started, though she tried to dampen the reaction. ‘Ma’am, I feel I serve Emperor and Imperium best in the Ordos Militant. Has my combat training been lacking?’

‘Far from it, though do not let yourself become complacent, novice. You have an advantage over your sisters-in-arms by being an early bloomer for your age. In a few years this will have evened out and you won’t have things so easy. I ask you to consider the difference between momentary ease and a genuine talent that will see you through your whole life.’

Anya looked at her feet like they were the most interesting thing she’d ever seen. Anya Dores, as she appeared in Administratum records, the original one, was years younger than Miryam Garza, so she was old-looking for her age because she was old for her age. Among her various worries about becoming too close to anyone, the other girls she trained with were not merely fanatically self-righteous about views she rarely held, but immature and unaware of how silly or petty they sounded and a head shorter than she was.

She also wasn’t coming in with only her Low Gothic and a few half-understood phrases of Ecclesiarchical High Gothic. She remembered, as easily as moving her hand left instead of right, ancient letters her mother had taught her. She distrusted being good at languages because it meant placing herself in a whole different way of thinking, as different as the teachings of her people and the Imperial Cult.

‘I feel unclean.’

The Celestian nodded in understanding. ‘That is the burden of a Sister Dialogous, to carry the taint of the xeno and the heretic so the threats against humanity may be predicted without the more weak-willed becoming corrupted by the knowledge.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ She decided to give herself penance at the first opportunity for improper thoughts and lack of proper hatred towards the xeno. ‘I hold the Ordos Dialogous in high respect and understand their importance, but I feel my vocation is martial.’ It wasn’t much, but it was the longest speech she could remember giving in months.

‘Well, I’m hardly going to discourage you from that. It’s good for a young woman to be hot-blooded in the service of the Emperor. You might find a calling later in life when you really have come to understand their importance through experience. For now, I’m instructing Sister Dulcina to give you extra practices to do on your own during the first hour of free study time because you do more than you are, and idleness is a sin.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ Now she was biting back excitement. She wanted to thank her, but that would have been improper and she couldn’t think of a pious enough way to do it, so she kept silent. She’d have to light a stick of incense at the chapel.

‘If you improve and keep up all your existing responsibilities, I’m considering letting you train with the older girls. You must deserve it. I won’t let their training be slowed down for you, and your cohort will resent you too.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ She definitely wasn’t sure how to say she didn’t have any friends without sounding self-pitying or contemptuous.

Sister Tatyana gave her one of those looks adults gave children and said, ‘You are not a lone hero from a holodrama. You alone will never be able to support the Imperium on your shoulders. Your strength will be the strength of all your mission together, as sure you will rely on the Emperor at your back.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘I don’t hold you at fault. You’ll understand when you’ve found a situation that suits you and everything falls into place as smoothly as beads glide on a rosary string.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ _No, I’ll always be alone, and I have to be to be safe. And I’ll always be an outsider._

‘Now don’t be antisocial. Return to your training, Novice Anya.’

Anya clasped her fist to her chest and made a bow since she hadn’t taken vows yet before scrambling.


	11. Nothing Short of Miraculous angsty Sigismund sequel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 90% “Crimson Fist” angsting. sfw (in terms of lack of smut, warning for suicidal thoughts). Sigismund/Loken/Torgaddon, Dorn [PG-13]

‘We,’ said Tarik, head resting against the curve of Garviel’s neck in the dark, ‘have got to do something about Sigismund.’

‘What do you have in mind?’

Not, _what do you mean?_ They had no knowledge of the reasons or circumstances, only the obvious rift between the Imperial Fists’ primarch and first captain, and the previously aggressive captain’s cold silences and passive obedience, the seemingly innocuous or unrelated comments obviously designed to hurt by his reaction to them.

‘I’m not sure yet. You are interested?’

‘Of course.’ For all that they were who they had chosen to be, it painful to see other fathers and sons fail to reconcile, especially now when those who remained needed each other so much.

*

‘I don’t resent you having my lord’s favour,’ Sigismund insisted over wine. It was true, and easy to answer the way Torgaddon’s follow-up, ‘It’s not Lord Dorn’s favour towards us, it’s whatever has soured between the two of you.’ wasn’t.

It was true, because how could he resent others for his own failings? Those who had turned from all they’d ever known and their own father and brothers in order to stay loyal while he had not even been able to manage it here on Terra, where everything should have been easy.

He said instead, ‘I have not meant to give the impression of hostility to any who remain true. I am no snake coiling in the grass. If I am not favoured as I once was, it is all on my own head. I regret any disruptions in Legion cohesion you have seen me cause.’

‘ _Did_ something happen between the two of you that you are oathed not to speak of?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then we will not pry,’ Loken said respectfully.

‘But we will meddle,’ Torgaddon immediately continued.

‘Don’t. It is of matters personal and past.’

‘Sigismund, as one who knows failure too, do you think I wish to see good men fall again because I did not advise them right?’ Loken’s eyes were bright. ‘Despair too is the enemy. It is the creeping rot that undermines the foundation of a fortress before a single shot is fired.’

‘Do not think me one who would shirk from duty,’ again, ‘or that my lord will not put us all to our best use. My place is only to obey.’

‘A primarch is not infallible. We’ve seen well the consequences of turning from good advisors as surely as listing to bad ones. With your father holding you at arm’s length, he trusts no one.’

‘Who is worthy of trust? You’ve seen treason more than I.’

‘But I have seen loyalty too,’ Loken shot back vehemently, and Torgaddon patted his shoulder. ‘If we have been betrayal, all the more closely must we cleave to those who remain beside us. If we have managed any blows against them, it has been born from that. If we turn against each other too, the enemy at our gates will have his way with us.’

‘If I am not deemed among the loyal, leave it at that and do not ask me to detail my shame. I beseech you to support my primarch in my place.’

They did not say it, though he could tell they were thinking it, _What could the Black Knight have done wrong? Was he not always said to be the truest of sons?_ Well, people had said such things often back in the day, and look how that had turned out. _What did he do that was treason and why was he spared execution for it?_ Would they understand it had been no mercy but a cold need that had forced him to live, denied him the reparation even the most honourless of deaths could have bought him?

There was only that which had brought him here. To stand by Rogal Dorn’s side he had forsaken honour and loyalty and kinship. So he would stand even as the shadows of treachery blotted out the sun, the drop-pods so thick in the sky and the smoke from the fires filling the atmosphere. Let others do for Dorn what he could not anymore, for that man’s sake. As for his own, he would bear the price he paid: that his father would never again smile at him, never trust him, never acknowledge him as his son.

There was a certain freedom in knowing you were already reviled, that you had the heart of a traitor who put his own desires above his duty. No more second guessing. No more doubt. He already knew he was wrong. So let him stand at his father’s side with all the stubborn immobility of the Imperial Fists. He would dig in his heels in the face of all curses: accepting them as his due, but remaining, for that one moment where he would be needed and it would make all he had endured worthwhile.

‘We will do all we can for your primarch.’

‘We’re still talking to you, though. What’s yellow and black and looks like it has no will to live?’

‘Tarik...’ he growled.

‘It’s your face,’ Torgaddon answered unnecessarily. ‘You may think me shallow, the crusade’s jester, but do you think I of all people don’t know the weight of guilt? That I got this far without ever believing myself wrong? That I’ve never thought I deserve everything to happen to me, that I’ve never believed for a moment when father and brothers said such things to me?’

Sigismund had never looked for understanding, not even from his Legion’s Chaplains. Beyond not expecting sympathy, or wanting it, he stuck to his order to not infect more worthy sons with his own weakness. That others might find him familiar had not occurred to him. Did it ached every moment like his own wounds? He had been in the wrong and they in the right, but there were others disowned by their parents. Even if they knew consciously they were in the right, and had done all they’d done because they believed it in their hearts, how it must feel to have hanging over them? Every fibre in his being had cried out against Dorn’s rejection of him.

‘What do you ask of me then?’ Was there an answer? He couldn’t believe there was, beyond cold, stubborn persistence.

‘What do you want?’

To be punished. But, the illegitimacy of listening to the saint outside the chain of command had taught him, it could only come from one source. He wanted Dorn to punish him. He wanted something he could do to prove himself again, some atonement he could take, some cathartic penance. By denying him that, Dorn told him he would never, ever be forgiven, or deserve to be.

He wished for the bite of his own sword, too fast to see, too fast to feel, that would be how his father would do it because that was what you did, if he had. He wished for those cold-chapped, calloused palms to hold his face once more in his grip one last time, even if only to snap his neck.

‘Nothing that can be given by anyone else, eh? What is it you _need_ that your brothers can give you?’

‘You suggested yourself we take comfort in each other for tomorrow we could be dead. Doesn’t that also apply to you?’

Denying Garviel Loken had a lot in common with kicking a puppy. Being embraced by him was akin to having one throw itself at you and look at you with those wet eyes. Torgaddon moved in concert with him to put a more casual arm over Sigismund’s shoulders, in case he hadn’t thought this was a plan of their mutual making.

In the old days, Sigismund had never fallen between the sheets with anyone he hadn’t just fought. He wasn’t sure how else you went about it, and had attributed the whole idea to those who were sentimental. The word didn’t quite mean ‘weak’ in his mind, so much as not something for him. He did not outright disparage those of his brothers who were especially close friends in such a way, like Loken and Torgaddon, as long as it didn’t interfere with their work, but none of his relationships had ever been like that. He had never wanted it.

Now he let Torgaddon pull him down to lean against his chest and be encircled by his arms. Loken brushed his lips against his only for a moment before pressing them against his forehead and cuddling up against him. They worked off sword belts, but not duty-robes.

This was not something that had been common to Sigismund’s experience before. Sex was another kind of spar to burn off steam, and you left when you were done. Only a few times, after the Nails, after everything had already started to go wrong, Khârn would hold his oath-brother close as he came down from the madness, trembling with exhaustion with muscles almost too fatigued to move.

In the morning, Torgaddon could nuzzle his neck and hold him still while Loken kissed down his stomach. In the morning, Sigismund could remember who he was and what he’d done. For now, he could sleep.


	12. Grandma Dot excerpt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OCs, gen [PG]

I was thinking of getting up to make tea when I got texted a summons by the secretary of my lord, the Chapter Master.

I groaned as I stood, the reason I’d been putting it off and hobbled to the door as my joints creaked and popped. Juvenat treatments or not, I was an old woman and I felt it in my bones. Three hundred was not just another two-ninety, like my father had said about turning eighty so long before, and I felt it in every non-mechanical part of my body.

The house Zoe and I had built had seemed like a good idea at the time, within the outer walls of the fortress-monastery but relatively isolated in an open killing-field, insulated by being mostly below-ground. Now I took the stairs slowly and carefully, and grit my teeth as I put on my outdoor parka and accessories and thought about things I might have said about ‘easy walking distance.’ I _used to_ jog to my lab at the heart of the fortress compound everyday, just because it was chilly out here at the south pole.

I woke my little Annika and climbed on her back in rickety movements. Little being a bit of a misnomer, the dog-wolf was a massive beast in general, but it was deserved compared to a true Fenrisian wolf. She wasn’t large enough to carry a Space Marine, even out of armour, but I could ride her like a pony. Age had made me light, bony, and insubstantial if nothing else.

The cubs she threw mostly showed much larger strains, particularly after I’d fussed around with the gene sequence that made ligers bigger than tigers or lions. Annika was only in the early stages of pregnancy with her next litter, so she didn’t fuss about leaving her nap in the sun on our doorway.

The handful of wolves, most of them close relatives, the Black Wolves had brought from Fenris when they left simply weren’t enough for a viable lineage that weren’t blind and crook-spined. They were hybridised with local wild populations of wolves and larger dog breeds like various kinds of mastiffs. Canid breeds are as common as humans across the galaxy from when colonists first left Holy Terra however many thousand years ago.

From what I knew of legends and records of the Fenrisian base stock, these wolves were already hybrids of various subspecies, and were larger but tamer and more sociable with each other and humans than their wild ancestors. It’s really stupid to have a cavalry wolf who only tolerates you through fear and will turn on you and try to eat you at the first opportunity, after all, which is why no one really uses first generation Thunderwolves compared to a cross-breed they raised from puppyhood outside of saga. All in all, it was a complicated trial-and-error for size and intelligence and disposition. Annika had the latter two of the three at least.

Everyone needs a hobby in retirement, after all. I had grand-puppies.

Annika growled as someone she didn’t know well checked out credentials through the next layer of security to the fortress-monastery proper. ‘Now, now, dear, she’s only doing her job.’

‘Do you--’

‘No, don’t say a thing about making an exception, however obvious it is who I am or how often I come by here. I could be a really good infiltrator today.’

The woman looked somewhat puzzled at being addressed by someone like me so, as well as I could tell under her snow-gear. ‘Are you?’

‘No.’

‘Yes, Lady Katai.’

Annika flicked her tail in a wolf-laugh, more from our tone than the words. Fenrisian wolves aren’t quite sentient by human standards, but they are quite intelligent. Annika favoured her ancestor Signy, who during flights of fancy I used to imagine really could understand my lord when she slept at the foot of his throne, though her disposition was sunnier rather than being a queen among wolves.

She still was a fighting wolf, a killing wolf, mind, which was why I hadn’t shown any actual disapproval to her being hostile to a stranger. It always paid to be vigilant and not cut corners in security, but the reason checking my prints and genescans was a formality was because she was the greatest verification of my identity. She was affectionate as she was towards me because I’d raised her from a puppy herself; she was barely tolerant of all but Space Marine of our Chapter and a handful of other people, and was trained to track and kill when something smelled of Chaos.

We continued inside. Once I would have left Annika at the door instead of parading through the halls with her, but she was my legs, increasingly. There was by no means a lack of room, since this was a Space Marine-sized fortress and had been from its construction last century.

They called it Sumar Virki, or Othlaer, the Summer Fortress, just to be dismissive of the temperatures here on Epistophy compared to Fenris.

I counted myself lucky there was no wind inside, and missed the deserts of my youth, even reminding myself I complained about the weather constantly when I lived there too. My lord knew I did not get around easily and could damn well have emailed me unless it was something that really had to be said in person. I would be cold and jostled because he’d implied it was that important and I trusted his judgement.

I wouldn’t be having these problems if I were a brain in a jar attached to a robot body. Just saying.

I did climb down from Annika’s back before my lord’s audience hall. That I had been called to his larger and more public audience hall instead of one of his private receiving chambers was telling. Most of the jobs he’d given me when I was younger were ones he wanted plausible deniability about ever having brought up. In this day and age, we were prone to the boring reminiscence or discussions of personal failings by the young that old friends were want to, mostly exchanging routine reports of things going about as expected from my research or from across a planet at peace.

I blinked through a layer of requisition paperwork I could access with my retinal link and found half a dozen worlds the Wolves were fighting, but they didn’t mean a thing to me without more research, nothing that obviously had anything to do with me.

I wasn’t kept waiting long before being admitted. The hall wasn’t already crowded, just his usual Wolf Guard, some of the people already in residence, messengers from the fleet. An audience. I wasn’t here to listen to him and some Wolf Lord of his discuss tactics. They were here to watch him talk to me.

An audience just to show he did me honour. Why?

Hrafn Blackwolf, master of the Black Wolf Chapter, sat in a throne set within the vast skull of a creature that had once looked something like a tyranid hierophant, except for having an endoskeleton. Compared to your average Khorne cultist he had quality over quantity at least.

He looked down at me as I creakily made my usual genuflections and said low, echoing voice three words. ‘It’s show time.’

‘Oh, that. You know, I was almost starting to wonder if it was ever going to. I knew it would, but I’d almost let myself hope that it wouldn’t be in my lifetime. Other half of me’s been expecting it every day.’ I was aware I was babbling, but that’s what my mouth did while my brain whirled.

‘You’re ready?’

‘Of course. You?’

‘As I can be. We knew it was coming. We’ve done what we can in advance. We’ll do what we can now. Events appear to be progressing as we guessed. Have any regrets, Katai?’

‘No, my lord.’ I laughed, a little amused and a little bitter. ‘There are advantages of it happening now. When I was young, it would have been harder. I would have shied away from what obviously our best bet as long as I could have convinced myself it didn’t need to be done. My plans get simpler and likelier now that I don’t have any regrets or second-guessing left. I can just cut to the chase.’

‘I’m not without regrets that will prove necessary myself.’ But it would and neither of us would shy from that. ‘It will be a loss for the Chapter.’

‘I can imagine many worse things.’ I had spent centuries imaging this moment, after all, and all the ways it might end up. So easy to be outmanoeuvred from the get-go. So many reasons to be overtaken by despair. The downside of a long life was having so much to lose, and how easily it could end on a note of watching everything I had worked for and achieved over all that time burn. That had some dramatic weight to it, the bard in me knew. ‘That’s why it will work, after all.’

‘To hope then,’ he said, and I smiled at the joke. Hope is of Tzeentch. As if we didn’t have enough problems already.

‘To victory.’ That got the approval of our audience.

‘My lady, you have done us great service these centuries and still do. To the younger generations in particular, you are--’

‘Save the speeches for my funeral, my lord. I intend for you to live to see it.’

He nodded, though he was after me the most likely to be targeted personally. I knew he was seeing to his affairs and his succession, considering the likelihood of being another Harek Ironhelm. We just wanted anyone to be alive after this.

‘As the All-father wills it.’

‘I’ll put in a good word soon.’

And then I left to finally act out a show long anticipated. To save my planet, fight off the forces of the Thousand Sons, and arrange my own death. Thank the Emperor this day had come after I’d become a widow rather than back when I still had the will to live.


	13. Fantasy-steampunk AU Mulan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the plot of Disney’s Mulan is [retold](http://shastablue.tumblr.com/post/37097740642/am-i-gay-a-journey-of-self-discovery-with-shang). (no, seriously I don’t claim otherwise)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from absurdfact's fantasy/steampunk AU, Dorn/fem!Sigismund, gets slightly nsfw near the end

Sieglinde is from the nomadic northern tribes. They live not so much near the border with any particular country as with the border of civilisation, in land no one had ever really mapped or claimed or wanted.

Their women are known for being much more independent and trained to fight than is normal for Macraggian women. They all go out with the reindeer herds. They can’t afford for half their people to lack the skills they need to survive, the land is not tame, nor is there anywhere safe to be left behind, not while still being the people of the reindeer.

When the conscription notices came it was difficult. There were never many of them and the community could not spare those they had. But refusing would have brought economic repercussions too, Macraggian cities that wouldn’t give them the favourable trading status of citizens instead of foreigners anymore, or would turn them away entirely. They’re part of the whole economic structure of the north, but ultimately they are much more dependent on city-bought Macraggian goods than the northern cities are on them.

Sieglinde was a brash, adventurous, and glory-hungry fool. She had the usual teenaged arguments with her parents and she was still unmarried on account of spurning numerous suitors. She considered herself unattached, all the “no one understands me” and “I’m not like other girls” stuff making her think it would be easy to pack up and leave and no one would miss her and vice versa. She wasn’t needed, not as much as anyone else who would otherwise go, so it was only sensible it should be her, and she could go win great victories and accolades. No one would have agreed with her or helped her, but she didn’t ask. She did.

Fortunately for her, the Macraggian army believed in mixing its conscripts from different regions to encourage loyalty to the nation rather than sticking everyone from the same home village together, when they could manage it, so she did not have to contend with others from her tribe at the recruit camp.

Her military career advanced, and however much things were different than she’d imagined, she was really, really good. Then there was Rogal, younger prince of Macragge, Duke of Dorn.

Rogal was fostered by his maternal grandfather, the previous Duke Dorn, in the mountains in the province borders Olympia, which he subsequently inherited. Not that he isn’t close to his parents and brother, but that was his primary influence. The land was cold and difficult and built up with military outposts, but also contained much of the country’s industry. He in turn is known as a cold and difficult man with a deep insistence on duty, honesty, and responsibility, with a talent and respect for industry, from that of the architecture of a fort to that of an artisan.

During this last war with Olympia, he was old enough to be given his own command. He was a good general, but he met Sigismund and things got awkward. In absurdfact’s words “He was so good at fighting and so smart and worked so hard to be the best. Sigismund was brilliant. He hugged him after losses and celebrated with him after victories and watched his back in battle.” Sigismund becomes his most trusted captain and personal adjunct, but Rogal is deeply conflicted about his personal feelings towards him.

Rogal never showed an attraction to men, but he wasn't really interested in women either. They confused him, or at best they had nothing in common. Women his own age were taught to seem ornamental and nonthreatening, or tried to catch his attention by being the opposite and aggressive, but he found that predatory and off-putting. He hoped his parents would eventually arrange his marriage to someone very competent and not unpleasant. Someone vaguely like his mother, though he couldn’t imagine having such a good partnership with someone as his parents had with each other. Maybe it would grow after marriage, that’s what people said, when discussing arranged matches.

Something like how he feels about Sigismund, the only person outside his immediate family he’s ever really, deeply connected with. His eyes linger on Sigismund differently than anyone else, not just because he keeps checking out his ass. He’s aware of his all the time. He can’t be thinking this. Sigismund is his subordinate and it would be absolutely dishonourable to take advantage of that or destroy all proper decorum or chain of command. There is no “after the war” for them; he needs to marry a woman. It’s his duty to give Roboute an heir. He would never even think of having a man on the side even if he was in an unhappy arranged marriage and his complete stranger of a future wife didn’t mind. He’s not the kind of man.

Sieglinde is less conflicted. She’s not ashamed of her feelings. They’re “woman seeks good man” feelings, not even “sexual tension with a bad boy” ones. She just wishes she didn’t have them and hopes they don’t show. She can’t have woman feelings because she’s being a man. She especially can’t show them, and worries every time they have a heart-to-heart that she did it wrong and she’s too feminine, but she can’t watch him suffer without doing anything or doing anything she knows will only hurt him.

In the midst of whatever heroic thing, Sieglinde’s attempts to avoid medical care are overruled and she is revealed as a woman. There are laws that call for her hanging. There are precedents for only dismissing her on lesser charges. On one hand, he’s not sure if it’s a good law and he’s not sure he wants to put more precedent behind it. She was as good as, better than most of, the men and never subverted unit cohesion with her feminine wiles, whatever the justifications for the law say. She’s saved his life many times over, there’d never been a need to keep count. She’s a war hero.

But on the other hand, more than just a regulation having been broken, he’s angry. She lied to him, over and over, and everything about her is a false pretence. He can close his heart to her, and quite possibly everything. Nothing they had was real, so he can cast it away and live without out, even if it leaves something empty inside him that never heals. It is only right. It is all his duty.

In the end, he throws her out and tells her to go home. She doesn’t. Flaunting orders (“I’m a civilian now”), she foiled an entire invasion attempt that almost went down right under his nose while he was distracted trying to do everything right. Perturabo is furious.

Rogal has to face her again. She waits, calmly, for his judgement. She knows he’ll hate her for disregarding him and the law. The first time could be called thoughtless; the second nothing but premeditated. But she regrets nothing. She couldn’t let him die and she would give anything for that, even her honour as well as her life. She will not flinch away or trying to defend herself, ends justifying means. She made her choices.

He's not sure what prompts him to propose to her, after everything happened. He can't lose her. Form has to be followed, but he can't lose her. It’s the most selfish decision he’s ever made. He could make excuses listing pros of the decision, but he won’t. He didn't do it for the kingdom or because she'd be a good princess, but because he needs her. There are wealthier or more politically connected heiresses, but for one moment in his life he lets himself be weak and reach for what he wants, for a life that is more than the bitter taste of duty in his mouth turning everything to ash.

She says yes. “And proceeds to scandalize the court, train aristocratic girls to use weapons, and introduce him to the wonders of sex. His mother loves her”, absurdfact added to me. She won’t let expectations be a cage. She isn’t out to disgrace him, but she won’t change and so she will change the entire structure of what propriety is to fit to her rather than the other way around. They’re happy together, they really are.

In the two years between them getting married and Roboute finally getting married, they’ve had two kids, and they seem unlikely to slow down anytime soon. All the things he’d half thought of but was too embarrassed to let himself think about? She doesn’t just tell him there’s nothing to be ashamed of, but that they should do that, right now, and they’ll both really, really enjoy it, and that’s true. He loves when she grins against his ear and tells him to him that she wants to hear exactly what he used to fantasise about when he thought she was a guy while she’s pegging him, or rides him while she’s so pregnant he’d be too worried to lean on her at all, or when he goes down on her.

Konrad and Rogal barely know such other even after they become brothers-in-law and their relationship is coloured mostly by Rogal’s running hate-rivalry with Konrad’s brother Perturabo, and his being unaware of the whole Night Haunter plotline. Sieglinde and Sevatar, Konrad’s valet, meanwhile, surprisingly get along. In this weird way of two people who spent years foiling each other’s plans and killing each other’s people and always have in mind ways to kill each other just in case, but aren’t currently at war. Sevatar thinks the whole “only man who ever defeated me in single combat being a woman” thing is a hilarious joke.


	14. Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: The Lion and Russ are reunited, after everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lion/Luther, Russ/Bjorn, it’s M45 and everything’s okay now AU [set in this same verse as ch. 8] [PG]

Russ pounded the Lion’s back and for once he didn’t disapprove of his brother’s over-abundance of enthusiasm. It had been millennia, after all.

Russ was more _himself_ than ever before. If anything, he must have scaled back what he’d been in the Eye--a storm, the sound and fury of nature, a wolf--to merely be scruffier and longer in the tooth. The Lion had always been aware Russ was a beast pretending to be a man, but he hadn’t appreciated how much work and choice must have gone into that.

(The Lion didn’t feel different. He had only been asleep.)

‘Who else is returned from the void?’ the Lion asked.

‘Roboute. Vulkan, I’ve heard rumours of. I’m glad you’re one of them, brother.’

‘As am I.’

‘I knew you loved me, despite yourself.’

Russ grinned, but Luther was giving him a look. He resolved to ask, and hoped Luther would do his part by answering honestly. They couldn’t let anything come between them again, yet the Lion knew his own frustration with not understanding and both their personalities urging them to never admit to anything.

Russ was watching one of the Astartes in his party as the Lion watched Luther. Young, the Lion noticed, very young, yet everything about how he held himself said this was an old man. Russ abandoned the Lion for his man, using the tone the knight had learned to recognise as teasing rather than insulting. ‘Don’t be jealous,’ he said, leaning down to brush their noses together, ‘I love you best and came back for you, not another primarch.’

Was that what Luther worried about too? The Lion couldn’t parrot that, he couldn’t, even if it was true, and certainly not where anyone else could hear, in front of Russ. Awkward, he hovered near Luther, silently begging that he understand.

Luther’s hand settled on the small of his back. The Lion felt like his breath caught and started again at once. Even he appreciated the possessiveness of the gesture, and he loved it even as he worried that only a blushing maiden was supposed to. He wanted Luther to be greedy, and wanted that excuse in turn. How much he appreciated lack of armour, for once, the thick ceramite layer between him and the world.

‘I’m glad the Allfather called you back already.’

‘Was I kept away so long?’

Russ shrugged. ‘You are a solitary creature. You needed your space.’ Russ eyed Luther; the Lion couldn’t guess the details of his thoughts, but his look seemed approving. ‘I needed the pack I’d longed for so many nights.’


	15. Guilliman/Lorgar dream hatesex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> post- _Betrayer_ Guilliman/Lorgar psychic/dream hatesex

Lorgar had guessed that Guilliman would determine he was in a dream, them lose all interest in interacting with his subconscious’ imagining of the traitor. He had been wrong ( _as usual,_ a part of Guilliman’s mind said, even as another told him he should qualify that with _unfair_ ).

‘Payback for Nuceria?’ Lorgar asked. Guilliman would prefer he didn’t talk, but when had he ever done what Guilliman wanted, or shut up? Even in his imagination. He’d rather not dream of him at all, or that he not exist.

 _For everything,_ he thought, but didn’t say because he would scream it. He hated Lorgar and hated Lorgar for being able to make him lose control.

Lorgar seemed to hear, but this was a dream, after all. ‘Go on. This is my gift to you. The only one I can give, when in the waking world I can’t stop and can’t justify myself to you.’

Guilliman hit him again, angrier. He didn’t want this Lorgar who wasn’t fighting him. He wanted the cleanness of a battlefield, to overcome another primarch who was a worthy opponent and to drag him back to Terra in chains because he was better. He didn’t want the empty victory of triumphing over this weak, spineless, masochistic, childish, mewling thing, which Lorgar was, possibly by his own addled, inherent nature.


	16. Hot Springs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Russ takes Konrad on a spirit/totem quest, also hot springs sex

Leman balanced the tray heaped high with food and beer easily even as he followed the incline deeper into the mountain. He would have been following the smell of sulphur, had there been any question where things were in his own halls.

The first day after he’d fished his brother out of the snow he’d barely spoken, armour malfunctioning from the cold and hair brittle with ice, wrapped in a nest of fur and wool and the body heat of Leman and his milk-brothers and everyone in the general vicinity he dragged in to act as a furnace, plied with boiling tea and soothing darkness. As Konrad slowly thawed he had become more snappish, but he had eventually agreed to try the hot springs over his scepticism and reluctance to be both cold and wet.

He didn’t see Konrad at first, and more off-puttingly couldn’t smell him over the background scents, but after a moment he unfolded from the water to keep Leman in his line of sight. Water cascaded down his hair and clung to his skin, his form sleek and whipcord thin for a primarch.

There was no question what was going to happen after that.

Leman set the tray down carefully, because one was not wasteful with food, even though that was not why he was salivating. His shirt clung to him with the steam in the air as he pulled it over his head, joining his outer coat and cloak and followed shortly by his layers of trousers.


	17. Dorn/Sigismund morning after

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> specifically in response to [this](http://sabbatine.tumblr.com/post/90980428906/dornsigismund-the-sexy-flogging-thing) fic

Sigismund was known for his temper, not sheer awestruck wonder, but the situation call for it as far as he was concerned. Dorn had made love to him, and wanted to do it again even more so. Once was a dream, a fantasy to confess to a chaplain and ask for proper punishment to purge himself of covetousness. Or it could have been an accident or experiment or momentary lapse, though he didn’t think his lord was like that. Dorn waking him with a gentle kiss, like knight and sleeping princess might share, was another matter entirely.

He was still pressed against him, head pillowed on the solid wall of his pecs, as Dorn leaned down to reach his lips. Dorn had a hand on his cheek, guiding him to exactly where he should be. ‘I love you,’ Sigismund said, for what could be more right than to speak those words first each morning and last each evening?

‘I love you too, my son.’

Dorn’s other hand moved to stroke his side and he remembered the promise that after they’d taken the edge off they’d have plenty of time to explore every inch of each other. There were those who called Dorn cold and he could be, cold as the mountains of Inwit, but they’d never seen him smile ever so slightly every time he saw Sigismund, hear his dry and understated sense of humour, understand the passion driving his dedication and duty.


	18. Hunter and Hunted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lion/Curze, pre-Unremembered Empire

The scent of rot in his nose, but it was only black mould growing on one of the abandoned decks of the _Invincible Reason_. Sudden sound, but only deck plates shifting and the ventilation cycling. It echoed strangely, not coming from exactly where his eyes and knowledge of his ship’s layout said it should, but that was only a pressure in his ears from the Warp transit throwing him off.

Yet the Lion knew his prey was close, the stain of him on the edge of his mind if not visible on the walls. He could smell the dried blood scent of him, seeming to come from everywhere without respite.

The faint glow of emergency lighting every few metres across the deck only served to make the shadows darker, where Curze hadn’t smashed them. He didn’t always, liking the contrast of it, the weakness of the light, almost as much as complete darkness.

The Lion felt a tug on the long strands of his gold hair, but Curze wasn’t there, only the breeze, only the shadow (it had been him all the same). He didn’t turn to look, wouldn’t give him the satisfaction, but all the same the next brush came across the cheek opposite his gaze. Wet, like a brush of lips or the flick of a tongue.

‘Curze,’ he growled. A laugh like a dying choke.

‘Frustrated at their dance of ours, brother? There are ways of taking that frustration out.’

‘You and your innuendo. You’re as bad as Russ.’ That was unfair to Russ, even the Lion had to admit. The wolf annoyed him with his flirting and their rivalry; the Lord of the Night was his enemy, a rabid thing that wanted to violate him mind and body.

‘Father did some strange ideas when he got started with you and Fulgrim,’ Curze said companionably. ‘Such beautiful monsters. I guess he changed his mind later, except with that bloodsucker.’

‘Don’t call him that.’

Curze laughed again, perfectly aware that the Lion hadn’t been defending Sanguinius’s honour. ‘No brother of yours am I? I could not have been make as you were, for then you would have to be like me.’

The Lion took a deep breath, still trying to smell for him. Rancid grease all around him. ‘I know I’m not like you.’

Breath on his ear, the scrape of sharpened teeth on the shell of it. ‘No, you’re too pretty for people to see through your lies to what you are, while I wear it writ on my skin.’


	19. Clothes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soltarn Vull Bronn/OFC, non-Heresy AU

It was after everything was done and the whole planet knew Veronike, Perturabo’s daughter was their new governor, that she made a private noise of annoyance.

‘I liked this dress,’ she told Soltarn Vull Bronn. The pale lavender-grey silk chiton dress was liberally coated in mud. Not as much mud as Vull Bronn was covered in from holding up the palace from the fault that had almost destroyed it, but that was an excessive amount to compare to. He was momentarily reminded of Veronike as a child, happily building mud-castles underfoot in Iron Warriors army camps. She’d loved mud.

‘Is it ruined? Can it be… laundered? I don’t know these things. Are things ruined the instant they get a spot on them?’

‘I don’t know either. I suppose anyone who can afford such a thing can replace it at any excuse.’ She sighed. ‘I _liked_ it. I had sentimental value. I mean, I got it last week, but it was nice. It was the girliest thing anyone has ever given me.’

Vull Bronn nodded sympathetically. He appreciated Veronike confiding in him about her insecurity with the concept of ‘girly.’ She liked the exceptionalism of being spoiled as The Girl, but wondered what that really meant. She had never had a living mother. She had hardly spoken to a woman in her life, excepting tech-priests. Vull Bronn knew she had been spending time with some Olympian noblewomen, including the elderly matriarch who had given her the dress in question, but that was about the extent about it. Veronike had been reticent, calling it not very important, and he was not adept at drawing out conversation from someone.

Veronike got fed up with examining her dress and lifted it over her head, as casual about nudity as someone raised by Space Marines. Vull Bronn was equally used to that and used to ignoring it from most people, but he found himself giving her a long, lingering glance out of the corner of his eye. She was his lover, it was allowed, even if it felt like a guilty pleasure. She was not traditionally beautiful from his understanding of feminine beauty in classic statuary and the porno slates the regular army read. Too androgynous, too stocky, too unkempt. What was wrong with those people? he wondered. He watched the play of her back muscles as she searched for her strophion, the splatter of mud from her purple mohawk as she shook her head, the curve of her hips into her thick legs. Her skin was free of the usual interface ports an Astartes would have--there wasn’t an inch of the skin she’d been born with that wasn’t better attuned to her armour than black carapace would be.

Veronike didn’t seem to notice. Usually she was the one to initiate their assignations, and she was pushy about it. Not that now was the time.

‘I’m proud of you,’ he ventured. ‘Finding something you want.’

Veronike snorted. ‘I can have whatever I want.’

‘Not the point.’

She sobered. ‘It’s something to do. For a few years. Then maybe I’ll have a better idea what to do with the rest of my life. Be a warsmith and play the respectable Astartes, be a Martian technosaint, be rebuild more planets like Olympia if I decide I like it, I don’t know. Dad would spoil me forever, but I’m not a kid anymore. I want a place in this galaxy.’

So many of the Legion so desperately wanted their gene-sire’s approval and affection. They would pretend otherwise, for it was too sad to wish for something you never expected to get and were told you shouldn’t want. Vull Bronn had never felt the pull that strongly, but he wasn’t blind. But for Veronike it was something that would be taken for granted. The Legion would be furiously jealous of her if the primarch’s aura hadn’t rubbed off on her--the need to be gazed upon and liked by her as well, their sister, the beloved daughter.

The longing made them strong, supposedly, though Vull Bronn doubted this bit of Legion wisdom. Veronike was stronger than any Iron Warrior he knew, and that strength came largely from her lack of hesitation in seizing whatever she wanted and assuming she would succeed.

‘I’ll support you,’ he said simply. Obviously--he and his company had been assigned as her military detail. An assignment without glory, but Vull Bronn had never resented its lack. He enjoyed doing his duty. He was solid and stoic as the stone in his heart. He remembered his own resolve--I won’t let things fall apart.

‘Good. You’re my rock, you know. My solid foundation.’ She laughed at her own words, remembering the feat he had so recently performed, not quite a psyker power as other Legions performed them but something equally bone deep and unreplicatable. ‘Love you.’

‘I love you too.’

‘Do you think I made Dad happy?’

Perturabo’s expression had been awestruck, something he told himself he could never have handed to him on a silver platter by his daughter. ‘Yes.’

‘Good.’


End file.
